I want to get this out of the way first: Last night, while I was sitting at my desk writing, I swore I heard voices. Very faint voices. I had just finished one CD and had taken off my headphones to let my ears breathe a while when I heard them. I thought maybe it was my next door neighbor's TV, which would be really odd, since he's usually in bed around 10. After a process of elimination, I turned up the speakers on my computer monitor on a whim. I usually keep them off because the sound connection doesn't work anymore anyway, but to my surprise, they now appear to be picking up the signal of a local talk radio station. Very strange. Glad to see I'm not schitzophrenic.

Anyway, on to the real story. Tonight, while cooling down after my run, I happened to turn on HBO to see, of all things, a documentary on methamphetamines called Crank: Made in America. It caught my attention because it was shot, at least partially, in Windsor Heights, Iowa, which happens to be the next suburb over from where I grew up. Suddenly I was very glad not to be in Iowa anymore. The kids in this doc had nothing to do but drag race, putter around in faux wood panelled basements and, I guess, shoot crank.

I'd like to know why people can't seem to come up with slightly better nicknames for their drugs. They all sound too much alike: Crank, crack, coke... What if a drug-addict-on-the-go wants one, but his dealer mishears? The addict runs off all happy to shoot up but gets a very unpleasant surprise in his baggie when he does. And as any retailer will tell you, when the customer's unhappy, the seller's going to wind up unhappy, too. Pretty soon, the junkie's blown up your custom van, the cops come and arrest everyone on the scene, and you're in a cell with a behemoth who calls you "Nancy." That is why you've got to distinguish your products, people!

Anyway, I'm told the reason the meth problem is so bad in Iowa is that it's on the intersection of two major interstates, I-80 and I-35. I'm not entirely clear on why that only increases the flow of meth and not just all drugs, but if I had to guess, I suppose it's because meth can be produced at home instead of grown somewhere down south and imported. Take that, Columbia.

The show took great pains to reinforce the fact that Meth kills brain cells, which seems terribly obvious to me, and somewhat of a useless statement when you consider that pretty much all drugs kill brain cells. It's what they do, and we have pretty much come to terms with that. No one seems to mind when beer offs a few of the plucky bits of gray matter with the misfortune to stand in its way. Why the creators didn't quantify this better, I don't know.

Documentaries always seem to have this dual effect on me, and this one was no exception. On the one hand, they cheer me up to no end about my lot in life. They generally don't make documentaries about hot supermodels with too much money, unless it's a swimsuit special on E! No, usually they follow around some down-trodden fool with a life far worse than mine could ever be without some real effort. I mean, these people are overacheivers at screwing themselves up, and how can you not feel superior to that?

Unfortunately, the other side of that coin is that, well, there is now no ignoring the fact that you have to share a planet with these jerks. Sometimes, like in the case of this doc, even a zip code. I probably saw some of these very same assholes at football games, peeling out their Trans-Ams with the empty cans of Natural Light in the back, blasting Journey's Greatest Hits at window-rattling levels.

So the question is, if these shows make me so manic, why do I keep watching them? I suppose it's the same reason addicts try crank: because someone gave them pot in high school. No, wait... That's not it. No, it's probably all tied up in the same impulse that causes people to stare at car wrecks or watch American Idol: There's a wicked, undeniable fascination with other's misery, particularly if its self-inflicted. (Which may also go a long way towards explaining why I write this weblog, but I digress.)

It's not nice to laugh at people's misfortune, but sometimes they make it so damned easy. I remember watching another documentary on HBO with my roommates back when I was in college. It was about prostitutes in New York, and it wasn't the original Hookers at the Point, but some sequel, like Return to the Point With the Hookers Who Are Still There Fifteen Or So Years Later, or something. And it's a miserable existence, don't get me wrong, and I wouldn't wish it on anyone, but very often these people make some excruciatingly stupid decisions. Besides the thong-with-thigh-high-boots fashion choices, I mean.

This one prostitute was relating a fairly horrific story about getting assaulted at gunpoint by one of her johns, but she smartly managed to get the upper hand and get out of the car. At this point, we, the audience, is cheering for her. "I made it out the door, and I was free and clear." Yay, hooker!, right? Well, no:

"Then I went back for the shoe..."

...

She went back for a shoe. No, really: a shoe. A SHOE. Look, honey, I know money's tight and all, otherwise you wouldn't be hooking. (I don't think.) But regardless, when your choices are...

A) retrieving the shoe but also getting pistolwhipped by a maniac;

B) freedom, minus one shoe.

Always -- always -- pick B.

So amongst my roommates, "going back for the shoe" became shorthand for doing something irredeemably moronic and damaging. Say someone (okay, me) called up his ex that day, the inevitable response was, "Aww, hell. You just had to go back for the shoe."

We all go back for the shoe now and then. It's inevitable, I suppose, if only from a statistical standpoint. Nobody's perfect. The key is, I think, when you know ahead of time that you don't need the shoe that bad -- like, say, when someone offers you a hit of a drug named after a car part -- you opt to just let it go, man.