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When I was a kid, for a while I was obsessed with S.E. Hinton's books. Her books were great, and at a time when I hated most of what I read in school, something attracted me to her work, which probably felt to me as punk rock as anything I'd ever read. There was a whole continuity she'd created, filled with inequality and smartass kids and drunk adults. It felt like a world much closer to real life than the dumb Red Badge of Courage ever presented to me.
One of her books, probably one considered to be for older kids, was That Was Then, This is Now. You might remember the movie, which had Emelio Estevez and... Craig Scheffer? Something like that. Anyway, the book revolves around these teenagers growing up and falling into drugs and love and crime or something. But in it there's a kid who is obsessed with M&Ms. He holds his face up to the open bags to look at them*.
 Less surprisingly, he falls into a bad way with drugs and eventually goes missing or something. Look, it's been over 20 years since I read that book (which is not the one I mentioned at the beginning of the main post, in case you were wondering). But ever since then I think I have a buried association in my mind connecting M&Ms and drugs. Stay in school, kids.

*Not surprisingly, he is called M&M. Whether or not this had any bearing on a young Marshall Mathers III is beyond my ken**.

**Footnote within a footnote's footnote! I can't keep up with all of this.

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*this will be done if it takes me a year. I promise.

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**until, of course, when the apocalypse happens. Then they’ll be far, far less adapted to survive without the cushy padding of a technological infrastructure. THAT, my friends, is when we take back the planet from our adapted hellspawn.

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***If a caveman from 1990 showed up at my doorstep a la South Park and asked me to update him on what happened since he was frozen, I’d probably just say “war and the internet” and he’d be like “oh, that’s it?” Then it would take me 10 months to explain exactly what that means.

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****Though it is less than exciting to note that M&Ms still use a dye which is banned in much of Europe and not recommended for children.

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*****Remember how green M&Ms made you horny? What the shit was that about? Is that just a byproduct of outlawing alcohol for teenagers or something? How did that even make sense? I forget, I think brown ones had some sort of effect on people, too. Ridiculous.  Presumably, the tan ones made you really, really boring.

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******Game 1 of the NBA Finals, in which I watched the Sixers beat the Lakers in LA at my favorite bar of all time with my favorite person of all time.