The Choking Game

What the fuck teenagers? Really this is the most retarded thing I have ever heard. What's wrong with you? With all the modern advances in drugs and alcohol there is no reason to be choking yourselves. That's what the stupid people did during the Middle Ages. Are you as stupid as the stupid people during the Middle Ages because that's what it sounds like. Just go buy some weed, its not hard. Just walk down to the park after dark and find a black guy in a hoodie. If he's not there to sell weed then he's there to buy weed so just follow him to the dealer. It's not hard and despite public service announcements that say weed makes you shoot your best friend or run over girls who play in the drive thru of fast food joints, marijuana has no adverse affects. The worse it can do is make you into a really sweet stoner ala Cheech Marin or Jason Mewes. Those guys do nothing but smoke weed and hit on high school girls, and one of them still became a famous actor.

You know what I blame for this phenomenon, that one show where people compete to be INXS's new lead singer. It's a well known fact that INXS's old lead singer, Michael Hutchence, killed himself during an autoerotic asphyxiation attempt gone wrong. These kids are obviously trying to emulate him. Of course when you pass out during autoerotic asphyxiation and your mother finds you, it is very embarrassing, so they are just skipping the masturbation part. Plus these kids are all pretty young so it could be they haven't quite hit puberty yet. Rock Star INXS has also been known to drive people to choking themselves when they realize that no loving God would allow something like this to come about, and they decide to end it all.

These sort of problems are exactly why the BABES* program needs to be updated. Kids have gotten dumber to the point that it's deadly. It used to be that all we had to learn was not to raid our parent's liquor cabinet and that everybody is special. Now we need Early Bird to sweep in and say "Honk honk! Don't choke yourself retard. You might get dizzy for a couple of minutes but it results in a lifetime of brain damage". I don't know if BABES is still going on but I hope so. Somebody needs to address the problem of prepubescent autoerotic asphyxiation before the future of this once great nation is choked and masturbated into nothingness.

* I thought that there may be a lot of people who won't get my reference here so I wrote a short guide about BABES.

A Closer Look at

For those of you who weren't privileged enough to experience BABES first hand, let me explain. Once a week an overly cheerful woman came into your classroom and put on a puppet show that would teach you lessons about the dangers of drugs and how to avoid peer pressure. Not exactly high end entertainment, but it beat the hell out doing math worksheets. Plus it was kind of funny because there was only one woman and sometimes there would be more then two characters in a scene so she would have to quickly switch puppets depending on who was talking. I also have some vague memories concerning answering questions and getting candy. Well let's take a closer look at the characters in this elementary school passion play.

Buttons & Bows McKitty

Button and Bows are the closest thing BABES has to main characters. The stories tend to revolve around them and most of the time they are the ones learning the lesson. They are brother and sister but we never find out which is the older sibling, or if they are twins because that seems like it could be plausible. I don't think there is a single BABES adventure that doesn't feature them, which is a good thing because they are the only ones without some sort of quirky/annoying personality. Their parents exhibit symptoms of alcoholism, which probably explains why they are named after articles of clothing. I'm not sure how you can exhibit symptoms of alcoholism but not be an actual alcoholic, but I'm just going on what I read.

Buttons and Bows also apparently have a career outside of BABES, as they are scheduled to make an appearance at Bluefield State College. I don't know if this is a sign that BABES has disbanded or if this is just a side project.

Myth Mary

Myth Mary is a stupid fucking bitch. I distinctly remembering thinking this in 2nd grade even though I didn't know what the words fucking or bitch meant. She spreads lies concerning the topic of the week, not for some malicious reason or hatred of our heroes; rather she is just really gullible and pushy. Basically, she hears something that isn't true, believes it and then argues that fact against overwhelming opposition and common sense. If you have ever gone into an Internet forum then you have met somebody who is very similar to Myth Mary. If BABES is ever updated, she will spend all her time claiming that its Bush's fault that oil prices are so high and that he should be impeached for starting the war in Iraq.

She also has a severe lisp which makes it impossible for her to say her first name. I don't know if this is a standard or just a little thing that the lady doing BABES for my class added, but it was always good for a laugh.

Donovan Dignity

Donovan is an owl, and because of this he is really smart and pompous. If BABES was updated, he would be the person who follows Myth Mary around posting links to Snopes proving her wrong. As it is, he just sort of swoops in after Buttons and Bows have had adequate time to ponder about whether they should drink booze or what not, gives some advice about not giving in to peer pressure and then leaves. He also has a sweet song about dignity that he sings on occasion.

Recovering Reggie

Recovering Reggie

Recovering Reggie is a dog who is a recovering "cross-addicted alcoholic" whatever the hell that means. If anybody out there knows what a cross-addicted alcoholic is let me know because I'm completely in the dark right now. I know what an alcoholic is, and I know what crosses are but cross-addicted alcoholic makes absolutely no sense whatsoever. Maybe that's an alcoholic who gets drunk off communion wine.

I don't like Reggie; he may look all cute and cuddly but there's something sinister at work here. First of all how old is he? Most of the other characters are portrayed as being child like, but this guy has already had time to get addicted to booze and then recover. That means he either started drinking very young or is much older then the rest of them. He's also yellow, not Golden Retriever yellow either, but more like a traffic light. In that picture up yonder he is orange, not yellow, but the puppet from my youth was yellow. That orange doesn't look too natural either. Alcoholism must give you jaundice or possibly he's the yellow guy from Sin City who sounds like Gilbert Gottfried. Maybe he is some sort of pedophile like the guy from Sin City. This would explain why he is yellow and hanging around with young children.

Early Bird

Early Bird shows up whenever a character considers the possibility of drugs, yelling "honk honk". Then he gives some useful drug related facts. He always shows right up the exact moment the person thinks about drugs. Its kind of like one of those public service announcements at the end of G.I. Joe where some kid takes his bike off a jump and almost die but at the last second Quick Kick shows up, saves him and teaches all of us a lesson about not taking bikes off of jumps. Except Early Bird only saves five other people and does it while yelling nonsense.

He would have been better if he told lame jokes and then said “honk honk” like some sort of anti-drug vaudeville act. "Say you hear about the alcoholic who got cremated, he burned for three days honk honk.” For full effect Early Bird would also have Groucho Marx glasses and a cigar.

Rhonda Rabbit

This is the BABES money shot. Not only is Rhonda's mother on drugs but Rhonda herself is neglected, and appears to have been physically and sexually abused in the past. That's pretty heavy handed for a puppet program targeting children in elementary school. Hell, that's pretty heavy handed for any puppet program. As a child, I never liked her because she is shy and indecisive, but now I see where she's coming from. Back then they never came right out and said her mom's boyfriend touched her at night, but now thanks to the Internet I have access to that information, and if I search hard enough I could probably find a website dedicated to erotic stories about it.

I only have vague memories of the stories from the program. I was hoping to find transcripts for the stories on the Internet, but most of the websites I visited just talked about how awesome BABES is for preventing drug abuse or had instructions on how to teach children. There was also a lot of porno. Let me tell you, Googling the word BABES makes a shit load of porn come up. I do have very specific memories of a story where Myth Mary convinces Buttons and Bows to eat some cookies that their mother made without their mother's permission. I don't know why this one story made such a huge impression on me but it haunts my dreams to this very day. Why did they listen to her? Why did they succumb to the forbidden passion? I ask myself these questions, but never have any answers. Parallels can be drawn to the story of Adam and Eve, with cookies taking the place of apples and squirrels instead of snakes, which in my opinion makes it a much better story. There is also one where Rhonda Rabbit tells the other puppets about an embarrassing time when she had some friends over to her house and her druggy mother was passed out on the floor. Really it's a shock, and embarrassing the first time, but having a mother strung out on drugs can be fun. She's guaranteed to have a sweet Grateful Dead record collection, and the house is always going to be full of smack. Sure she might sell your toys to pay back the dealer, but you have to take the good and the bad.

BABES began in kindergarten and was supposed to go until 5th grade. Then after 5th grade, we would get a pin that says dignity on it from Donovan Dignity to prove that we passed the program. Thing is, the BABES lady stopped visiting half way through 4th grade, for whatever reason, so I never actually passed the program. The lack of drug education sort of explains my 5th grade addiction to ether. In 6th grade we got a year of D.A.R.E. which wasn't very useful. The only thing I learned from D.A.R.E. is how to avoid drug dealers who chase you down and try to give you heroin for free. BABES at least had situations that could actually happen. Most squirrels don't find a bottle of unlabeled booze in the gutter on her way to a birthday party, but it's a hell of a lot more likely to happen then a drug dealer deciding to put all his effort into forcing ten year olds to take his merchandise.

So is the BABES program effective? Maybe, maybe not who knows, I don't that's who. I suppose somebody must think it does something because it exists. All I know is that BABES left a lasting impression on me. Whether this has prevented me from doing drugs or driven me to them has yet to be seen.