I've worked seven of the last eight days, three of them night shifts, and, while I am "grateful just to have a job," as you must be in 2014 America, I get a little tired sometimes.

So tonight, driving home, I figured I'd stop and buy two bottles of beer for after I write this column.

The liquor store is located in a dingy bit of capitalism not far from my house. There's a dollar store, a tattoo parlor, a drugstore and a discount cigarette store, a nail place and a Chinese restaurant, all in two blocks.

And there was an Asian girl sitting on the concrete step in front of the nail place, smoking a cigarette, looking bored. And an old guy with long flyaway white hair and a big gold-colored cross around his neck, walking slowly. He might be one of the homeless who live in a patch of weeds behind the dollar store. Some of them have kids in Afghanistan or in military cemeteries or in jail. The guy who clerks in the liquor store once showed me a Purple Heart Medal some guy traded him for a half pint of lime-flavored vodka.

I grabbed two 12-ounce bottles of stout out of the cooler and looked at the wine rack. I don't drink wine but my wife does, and I thought I might buy her something.

And a guy bumped into me, apologized and reached into the glass-fronted cooler for two 20-ounce cans of cheap beer, $1 each. He had plaster dust on his boots.

I didn't see any wine I thought my wife might like — if only because all I know is she drinks red wine and, they had so many different kinds, I thought I'd make a mistake if I tried to pick one.

Sometimes, I move much too slow. And that's what I was doing. Instead of directing my wing-tips to the front of the store, I stood and looked around at the posters on the liquor store wall. There was a burning-eyed black girl on one poster, caressing the neck of a cognac bottle. On another shiny poster, cold snow-blanketed mountains. On another, a long, lean car, maroon with a bottle of wine hovering over its hood. People around a pool, the water blue as a sapphire.

And a kid at the register, maybe 22, buying very expensive cognac, but buying a pint of the stuff. The dodge among young men is to buy a pint of the good stuff, drink it, and keep the bottle. Next time you go to a party, they fill the bottle with cheap brandy and drink it from the bottle, haughtily turning down anyone who asks for a drink from their bottle because, "This s—t is too expensive to waste on you."

The tea party wants to take America back. Joe Biden wants to take America back. Well, here we are. Come get us.

To find out more about Marc Munroe Dion and read features by other creators syndicate cartoonists, visit www.creators.com. Dion's book of Pulitzer Prize-nominated column, "Between Wealth and Welfare: A Liberal Curmudgeon in America," is available for Kindle and Nook.