 Hello, this is Jim Hogue, and I'm back on the House at Puccorner. I have a quote for you, difficile est satorum nonscribere. That means it is difficult not to write satire. And that was from juvenile, who lived from AD 60 to 130. And he is the first satirist that I'm aware of. And he is followed by Jonathan Swift, maybe the greatest of all time, Mark Twain. And in the last century, particularly, well, we have Oscar Wilde, and then Tom Lair. And for today's entertainment, I have rewritten Tom Lair's piece, The Old Dope Peddler. And hopefully you will recognize who the old dope peddler is. But satire, it's difficult to describe what satire is. It's often written on two levels, for the people who don't get it and the people who do get it. And some of the great satires that we've seen in the last several years are, say, all in the family, married with children. And I mention that because Carol O'Connor, who played Archie Bunker, was stunned, almost horrified. I saw him interviewed that people didn't know. They didn't know that all in the family was a satire. They thought that he, as Archie Bunker, was for real, and they loved what he was up to. They just didn't get that he was making fun of them and that kind of character. So I was rather surprised when I saw that interview, but I learned a lot from it that successful satires are often written on two levels. You have the Simpsons, which is a good example of that. And I can think of another satire I used to make some postcards. And one of them was called Vermont Studs. And I had a chelameal trying to milk a bull. And these cards sold in stores. And a friend of mine owned a store. And she said, a woman came in and she said, well, that doesn't look like a stud. And she says, well, it's a joke. He's trying to milk a bull. It's a joke. And the woman stood there, obviously not understanding what was said. And she said, well, doesn't look like a stud to me. So that's another little bit of learning, learning curve that I had about if you want to do satire and you want a big audience, then you have to write it on two levels. This particular one, I hadn't really thought about that. I just wrote what I had to say. And I'm going to let it go at that. And I suppose that's probably all that. Oh, yes. I wanted to mention that Tom Lair, the great satirist who wrote the old dope peddler, also wrote the Vatican rag and other famous pieces. He gave up satire, he said, when Henry Kissinger won the Nobel Prize. That must have really cut off a lot of satirists at the knees. Because if you're going to satirize anything along those lines, the idea that someone like Henry Kissinger could win the Nobel Peace Prize would be great satire. But it happened. The nightmare actually happened. And so Tom Lair said that that's it. I can't do this anymore. He certainly was a great one. So anyway, here we go with the old dope peddler by Tom Lair and myself with me on the ukulele. And we'll fade into something interesting for you after this little ukulele introduction. When the shades of night are falling comes a fellow, everyone knows it's the old dope peddler spreading joy wherever he goes. Every evening you will find him around the neighborhood. It's the old dope peddler doing well by do-hoo. He gives the kids free samples because he knows full well that today's young innocent faces will be tomorrow's clientele. There's a cure for all your trouble. Here's an end to all this stress. It's the old dope peddler with injection happiness. I'll hire the doctors and the nurses for that's all right with him. For the old peddler prescribed each valid practice. Such cures must all be tossed for the old. The cures are customers lost. Mother nature must be conquered. Gainer function is the game. But the pattern doesn't matter. For the goal is just the same. From kids to ancient elders, every race and every creed. The old dope peddler gives them everything.