He slammed the door behind him and walked down the street. In the windows from the apartments above, he could see computer terminals, laptops, even televisions glowing woth connectivity from set top internet boxes. “Bah Humbug” he muttered as he walked “they are all so wasteful, all with DSL and cable modem connections, when a simple 9.6 k dialup from a free ISP will do!”
He came to the door of his house, and put the key into the lock. Was it the fog? Or the darkness, or was it something else? The door knocker, which was a simple lion’s head seemed to sprout dreadlocks, and the lips of the figure grasped a reefer which emitted the classic cannabis aroma. Socrooge peered at the knocker again, and it went back to being a brass carving.
Scuttling inside, he looked in his fridge, to see if there was anything left of last evening’s spam casserole. He picked up the bowl, and sat down at his computer, to idly surf the “bitchin babes” and “all anal” porn sites that were his only personal satisfaction in life.
While wrapped in wonderment over the unseemly body parts of women named Bambi, Fifi, Laverne, and Dawn, Socrooge was interrupted by a loud clanking, rattling of chains and gnashing of teeth. His monitor became covered in a cloud of wispy vapor, and for an instant, Socrooge thought he had burned it out, but the cloud soon coalesced into the ghostly figure of his late partner, MarleyMonkey. He was carrying a cheap plastic musical bong, which was filled with the cheapest of weed, since it continually sputtered and popped burning seeds. The noise of the seeds was only masked by the dreadful music of the Gibb brothers, which emerged from the bong at every toke.
Socrooge threw up his hands in fear ``Mercy!'' he said. ``Dreadful apparition, why do you trouble me?'' ``Man of the worldly mind!'' replied MarleyMonkey, ``do you believe in me or not?'' ``I do,'' said Socrooge. ``I must. But why do spirits walk the earth, and why do they come to me? And why isn’t Cannabis legalized?
***
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