Um… Uh… Gum Eh? CD Release Party in Garberville this Friday

Tin Can Luminary’s New Album, Um… Uh… Gum Eh?

CD Release Party in Garberville this Friday

This Friday, May 3 at the Hemp Connection in Garberville, I’ll debut my new album of Circuit-bent music titled Um… Uh… Gum Eh?

For younger readers, and others who might miss the rather obscure musical reference, the title and cover parody what is widely regarded as the worst (at least excluding the post-Roger dreck) Pink Floyd album, titled Ummagumma, a double album originally released in 1970.

A careful observer, or anyone with nothing better to do, can spot many parallels between Pink Floyd’s Ummagumma and my new album Um… Uh… Gum Eh? For instance:

Both albums contain a song about a guy who cuts people up with a sharp object:

Ummagumma has Careful With That Axe, Eugene

Um… Uh… Gum Eh? has Mr. Whisker.

Both albums include songs about outer space:

Ummagumma has Astronomy Domine

Um… Uh… Gum Eh? has The Saucer People Speak

Both albums have songs about knowledgeable beings:

Ummagumma has The Grand Vizier’s Garden Party

Um… Uh… Gum Eh? has The Orb of Omniscience

Both albums have long, spacy pieces where the only lyrics are “Oooh, Aaahh, and Ohhh”

Ummagumma has A Saucerful of Secrets

Um… Uh… Gum Eh? has Interzone Transit Authority

Both albums have collections of unrecognizable sounds, combined with spoken words:

Ummagumma has Several Species of Small Furry Animals Gathered Together in a Cave and Grooving With a Pict

Um… Uh… Gum Eh? has I Made A Collage

Both albums have song titles that reference Greek mythology

Ummagumma has Sysyphus

Um… Uh… Gum Eh? has Sirens of Space, and here’s what it sounds like:

While Pink Floyd is famous for using gobs of state-of-the-art music equipment, I recorded Um… Uh… Gum Eh? With instruments I made out of tin cans, cigar boxes and second-hand childrens toys. That’s the state of my art, extremely low-budget and uniquely homemade. Even though Ummagumma is probably the worst Pink Floyd album, Um… Uh… Gum Eh? is undoubtedly my best album to date.  Um… Uh… Gum Eh? is my seventh solo album, btw.

Does Um… Uh… Gum Eh? sound better than Pink Floyd at their worst? Yeah, I think so. Does Um… Uh… Gum Eh? Sound like Pink Floyd? Not really, but like Pink Floyd, Um… Uh… Gum Eh? sounds great when you are really high. It’s a trip!

Um… Uh… Gum Eh? will make you smile, take you on a tour of the cosmos and bring you to the brink of insanity, before safely returning you to Earth.  Here’s the first video single from Um… Uh… Gum Eh? titled: Falling

So come out to The Hemp Connection in Garberville

on Friday, May 3rd to hear more from Um… Uh… Gum Eh?, see and hear my homemade circuit-bent instruments, and to hear me play electric didgeridoo, for free, as part of Arts Alive.  Also on the bill will be Patchy Fogg, playing musical saw.

 

How to Tell if This New Drug is Right for You

How to Tell if This New Drug is Right for You

With the huge, and growing, variety of new drugs available today, you can’t possibly try them all. Information about drugs, always impenetrably technical, and mostly written in impossibly small type, dissuade most drug users from even trying to learn anything about the drugs they take, beyond the street name. So, how can you tell if a new drug is right for you?

 

Nearly everyone takes drugs of some kind, at least at times, and for many, drugs form a regular part of our daily routine. This is nothing new. You could argue, as I have in the past, that civilization itself, began as a dysfunctional adjustment to support an alcoholic lifestyle, that took hold some 10,000 years ago. Indigenous hunter/gatherer cultures have used hallucinogenic plants and other plant medicines ceremonially for hundreds of thousands, if not millions of years. Even animals, from songbirds to elephants imbibe from time to time, and some, like the koala, have cultivated their addictions for so long that evolution has shaped their bodies to accommodate their habits.

 

Economically, in the US alone, the pharmaceutical drug industry accounts for trillions of dollars in business activity annually, and forms a large portion of US GDP. Despite generally terrific profit margins, the pharmaceutical industry enjoys huge government subsidies as well. Yet, despite downturns in the rest of the economy, and growing government debt, drug use, drug profits, and drug subsidies continue to grow at an alarming rate.

 

Paradoxically, we, as people, continue to get sicker and poorer. We cannot lay this epidemic of disease completely at the feet of the pharmaceutical industry. Other factors, like an environment increasingly polluted with persistent toxins, poor diet, dangerous food additives, and long hours at stressful, yet sedentary, jobs all contribute to our general poor health. However, the drug industry itself contributes greatly to the proliferation of disease in our modern society.

 

A single drug can have many dangerous side effects, which often trigger new and serious health conditions. The explosion of new drugs has created an exponential growth in side effects, and with them a host of new conditions, which in turn, require more medication. Toxic pollution, generated in the production of drugs, cause disease in humans as well as in the animal kingdom. Disposal of drugs, usually in the urine of drug users, take their toll on human health and aquatic wildlife as they inevitably find their way into our nations waterways and water supplies. Addiction and overdose only add to legacy of disease that we can attribute to our remarkably vibrant Health-Care industrial complex.

 

No amount of spending, public or otherwise, no amount of new drugs, and no number of new doctors will solve this looming crisis. You might find this fact very depressing, and it might make you anxious about the future. If so, the drug industry has many drugs specifically formulated to treat those conditions. Still, how do you know if a new drug is right for you?

 

Here, I offer few general guidelines that I, a layperson, use to determine if a new drug is right for me:

 

1. If I see a commercial on TV that includes the words, “Ask your Doctor if…is right for you.”, I assume that drug sucks. I assume that if a company has to advertize their drug on TV, it must be a waste of money, like everything else I see advertized on TV.

2. On the other hand, if I read a headline like: “Nude Man Who Hijacked City Bus and Crashed Into Downtown Restaurant, Claims He Was Under the Influence of New Drug” I will probably try that drug.

3. If I see the name of a drug on anything in a doctors office, like the pen he writes with, the pad of paper he writes on, the lanyard around his neck holding his ID, anatomical models, lamps, tissue boxes, drapes, posters, etc., I will definitely not ask for any of those drugs. If a doctor does recommend a drug, any drug, I always ask if he has any free samples on hand, and if he can recommend a generic alternative.

4. But, if I see someone babbling incoherently, while writhing in a puddle of their own vomit, I will definitely ask around to find out what drug they took, and probably try some myself.

5. Finally, if a beautiful young woman asks me if I have a particular drug, I will do everything I can to find that drug immediately.

 

Of course, these are only general guidelines that reflect my own personal predilections, but they are informed by this statistical fact: You are significantly more likely to die of an overdose from a prescription drug your doctor recommended, than you are from a recreational drug you bought from a street dealer.

 

On The Money; The Economics of Drug Prohibition

On The Money;

Economics for the 99%

The Economics of Drug Prohibition

I’m sure that it comes as no surprise to you that dealers of illegal drugs enjoy large profit margins on the drugs they sell. American taxpayers insure these large profit margins through a massive government subsidy known as “The War on Drugs” which costs tens of billions of tax dollars annually. Prohibition is the generic term for the policy of using laws, and law enforcement, to keep certain drugs out of the open legal market. Despite over 70 years of drug prohibition, use of illegal drugs remains resilient, and demand remains, no pun intended, high.

 

The lion’s share of this massive subsidy, gets spent in efforts aimed at the nation’s most popular illegal drug, marijuana, and the plant it comes from, Cannabis Sativa. Government expenditures for the prohibition of marijuana alone include the cost of arresting, prosecuting and incarcerating over one-million Americans every year, far more than the total number of people arrested for all other illegal drugs combined. It also includes eradication efforts aimed at killing cannabis plants wherever they grow, often with chemical herbicides. Economically, this huge outlay of taxpayer dollars functions to artificially inflate the price of marijuana, or cannabis, a hardy weed that would otherwise grow wild in every state in the union.

 

Because of prohibition, this prolific annual weed has become tremendously expensive for marijuana users and taxpayers, as well as hugely profitable for black-market dealers. Despite the high prices and risk of arrest, an estimated 10-20% of all Americans use marijuana regularly, creating a tremendous demand for it. This demand, in turn, fuels a multi-billion dollar black-market industry that operates in every state, county and locality in the US, insuring that every state, county and locality spends even more taxpayer money to battle this black-market activity.

 

Thanks to grassroots organizing by marijuana consumers and advocates, several states have passed laws legalizing the use and distribution of marijuana, mostly for medical use. As more states pass these laws, both the price of marijuana, and the subsidies, at least in the states that have passed these laws, decline as well. Since the passage of California’s landmark medical marijuana law in 1996, the first of these laws, the price of marijuana has declined by more than half, nationwide. As more states pass these anti-prohibition laws, we can expect the price of marijuana to drop still further.

 

As police make fewer marijuana arrests, courts try fewer marijuana cases, and prisons hold fewer marijuana prisoners, taxpayers pay less for marijuana subsidies. While the Federal government has not budged on marijuana prohibition, and still spends billions on cannabis prohibition annually, many cash strapped states, counties and localities, even those that have not passed legalization laws, have de-prioritized marijuana prohibition to save money.

 

As these marijuana price-support subsidies decline, marijuana prices continue to slump. This comes as welcome relief to the millions of Americans who use marijuana regularly, and to taxpayers who have grown tired of subsidizing untaxed black-market profits. Still, thanks to vigorous Federal enforcement, and backlash from law enforcement, who stand to lose a tremendous amount of funding, marijuana prices, taxpayer subsidies and black-market profits remain high.

 

Although those who argue for marijuana prohibition argue that marijuana is a dangerous drug that no one should ever touch, very little evidence supports these claims. On the contrary, tens of millions of Americans use marijuana regularly, and like it. Not one person, in the history of humanity, has suffered a fatal overdose of it, nor has much evidence been found that marijuana causes long term health problems. Marijuana does not produce physical addiction symptoms, unlike alcohol, nicotine, opiates, many prescription drugs or even caffeine which all produce strong physical addictions that can be very difficult to quit. Even long-term chronic marijuana users can kick the habit without much difficulty, if they genuinely want to. This, I tell you from personal experience.

 

Clearly, the reasons for continuing marijuana prohibition are completely economic. Without the massive taxpayer subsidies involved in prohibition, the marijuana black-market would collapse, eliminating a multi-billion dollar industry. Governments would reallocate tax revenue away from law enforcement, and prisons, eliminating thousands of high-paying jobs in those fields. While, no one really likes black-market drug dealers or narco-cops, or would miss them if they learned to do something productive with their lives, they form a significant part of our national economy.

 

The pharmaceutical industry would soon feel the pinch as well. 100 years ago, half of all medicines sold in the US contained marijuana. Plenty of evidence shows that cannabis, or marijuana still works better than many prescription and over-the-counter medications for a host of conditions ranging from glaucoma and chronic pain, to epilepsy, asthma and nausea, especially nausea associated with cancer chemotherapy. Some estimate that legal cannabis, or marijuana, could immediately replace 20-40% of all prescription drugs, working as effectively, with fewer side-effects, than the drugs it would replace.

 

Since marijuana, or cannabis, is a natural plant, it cannot be patented. Because cannabis cannot be patented, patients who need it, would get it from farmers, not pharmaceutical companies. This would cut deeply into the profits of pharmaceutical companies, but drastically reduce health-care costs for patients. Farmers wouldn’t complain either.

 

Further, recent medical research suggests that humans have had a very long, and symbiotic relationship with the cannabis plant. The presence of “cannabinoid receptors” in the human nervous system seem to indicate that the cannabis plant played a role in human evolution, and that our ancestors have ingested cannabis for millions of years.

 

While it remains unclear exactly how these cannabinoid receptors contribute to human health, they clearly play an important role. Many, now common, ailments may stem from a lack of cannabis in our modern diet. Currently, doctors prescribe prescription drugs to treat these maladies, but the addition of a few green cannabis leaves into the diet, as other doctors recommend, might eliminate these diseases completely.

 

Beyond that, hemp, a high-fiber, non psychoactive, but also prohibited, species of cannabis, has a whole range of industrial uses from textiles and cordage to paper, plastics and building materials. Hemp, an agricultural commodity widely grown in the US before prohibition, could spawn a whole new hemp products industry. This new hemp industry might generate tens of thousands of new jobs in the long run.

 

New industrial hemp products would replace or reduce the need for synthetic fiber and forest products, thus eliminating the toxic pollution from manufacturing synthetics, and the habitat destruction that results from deforestation. While this potential new industry could create thousands of new jobs and spur growth in the economy, it also threatens the profits of some well established, and very influential corporations.

 

You can see that marijuana prohibition has much more to do with controlling “the economy”, than it does with dissuading people from smoking pot. If we could end marijuana prohibition today, black-market drug dealers, narco-cops, prison guards, pharmaceutical companies, chemical companies and forest products companies would all lose revenue. However, the rest of us would enjoy less expensive marijuana, better medicine, lower health-care costs, nicer clothes, cheaper paper and lower taxes, with less pollution or habitat loss. In other words, it would dramatically improve our quality of life. As Freewheelin’ Franklin of Gilbert Shelton’s Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers famously said, “Dope  will get you through times of no money better than money will get you through times of no dope.”

 

On The Money; The Economics of Addiction

On The Money;

Economics for the 99%

The Economics of Addiction

Intro:  Since Joe brought up the subject of addiction in his comment to last weeks post, I thought I’d share my economic perspective on the subject.  I’ve been very busy finishing up the book, On the Money; Economics for the99% which I hope to complete very soon.  this is an excerpt.

Alcoholism has touched everyone’s life in one way or another. If it hasn’t happened to you, someone you love, or at least someone you know, has suffered tremendously, or perhaps even died from their inability to control their alcohol addiction, so I don’t need to tell you how awful it is.

 

Narcotics, like heroin, morphine, and other opiates, as well as most prescription pain medications quickly become habit forming, and produce strong physical addictions.

Nicotine, the active ingredient in tobacco products produces an even stronger physical addiction that alcohol or narcotics.

Cocaine, methamphetamine and other stimulants, through a completely different mechanism, have strong addictive potential because of how they alter brain chemistry.

Even caffeine, the active ingredient in coffee and soft-drinks, produces physical withdrawal symptoms, including headache, nausea and irritability, but not as severely as the previously mentioned drugs.

 

Taken together, business in these addictive drugs forms a central pillar, if not the central pillar, of our modern economy, with the alcohol and tobacco industries forming the fattest slices of the addiction pie. Marketing addictive drugs makes excellent business sense because of the repeat business they generate. Few businesses enjoy the kind of reliable customer loyalty as do the purveyors of addictive drugs, and although highly profitable, these drugs produce almost unimaginable suffering for their users, their loved ones, and society as a whole.

 

The powerful physical addictions these drugs produce, can easily enslave users to the degree that they will often sacrifice everything, including their health, dignity, family relationships, home, and environment to feed the physical cravings these drugs create in the people who use them habitually. Most drug addicts however, function very effectively within society and the economy, and suffer no such indignity Everyone knows a few cigarette smokers, habitual heavy drinkers, and people who do both. While these behaviors are quite common, and socially acceptable, many more imbibe secretly, or at least with some degree of discretion, so their addictions remain mostly unnoticed by the people around them.

 

Most addicts treat their addictions as part of their basic living expenses, like food or housing. They simply budget for the additional expense associated with their addiction, by working more than they would otherwise need to. Few earn so much that they don’t notice the cost of their addiction. Most, on the other hand, require significant extra resources to satisfy their craving. Contrary to the popular myth that drugs make people lazy, drug addiction is, in fact, the true source of our modern “work ethic”, and all of this extra work, does take its toll.

 

People living in tribal hunter/gatherer cultures generally work very little, by modern civilized standards, to meet their physical needs. At times, however, hardship may demand considerably more from them, and evolution has provided for that. Humans have evolved considerable reserve capacity to cope with these occasional hardships, and in good times hunter/gatherer tribes expend considerable energy socializing, dancing and in other activities that they enjoy, and that promote group cohesion.

 

Drug addiction adds significantly to a human being’s perceived daily physical needs, so addicted people use more of this reserve capacity, usually considerably more, just to cope with the added cost of the drug. As a result, addicted people work harder, feel more tired, and have less energy for the kind of social activities that build group and family cohesion. On the environmental side of this equation, trees, plants, and animals don’t grow any faster, or reproduce any more prolifically, just because humans have adopted a drug addicted lifestyle, so this additional human neediness leads to additional stress on the natural environment.

 

So, addicted people put in more hours at work. At first, this meant clearing land for drug crops, as the ancient Sumerians did in Mesopotamia, to grow barley and wheat for their beer. This gave rise to farm life, a lifestyle defined by endless toil. As tribal people fall under the influence of addictive drugs, they hunt more than they need, and trade the surplus for drugs.

Ancient City of Ur. Used to be a cedar forest, cleared to grow barley and wheat for beer

As game becomes more scarce, addicted people make more clothes, baskets, drums, arrows, or any other craft items they previously made only for themselves, in order to trade them for drugs. All of this extra work further depletes the natural environment, so addicted people then go further afield to find the resources they need to feed themselves, and their addictions, which brings them into conflict with tribes who inhabit those areas.

 

In this way, drug addiction produces physical, social and environmental stress, that eventually leads to physical, social and environmental collapse. There in a nutshell, you have the economic history of civilization. It’s not pretty, (or funny I’m afraid) but its On The Money.

 

 

Introducing a Revolutionary New Beverage: Beer Free

 Introducing a Revolutionary New Beverage: Beer Free

So, I quit drinking beer last Spring, and I made it through the entire year without my usual case or two of IPA every month. Don’t worry, I’m not on a 12 step sobriety program, or any such weirdness. My girlfriend switched to a gluten-free diet, and very persistently nagged me to give it a try. Since she cooks for me, the food part was easy, but the beer. That was the sticking point.

 

She suggested I switch to wine or brandy. I gave them both a try. Sure, they both have plenty of alcohol, but neither has that clean, refreshing bite of a nice cold beer. Wine and brandy both seem kind of bourgeois to me, so, I found them both less than satisfying, and I tended to drink more of them to drown the feelings of self-loathing that came along with betraying my working-class sensibilities.

I tried hard cider. I like hard cider, on occasion, but the tartness of hard cider always reminds me of Jolly Ranchers, Smarties, or Pixie Stix, candy that I only ate because someone dropped them in my trick-or-treat bag at Halloween. I have some fond memories of Halloween, not that many really, compared to all of my fond beer memories, but a few. I don’t necessarily want to relive my Halloween memories every evening, especially with a taste that reminds me of people who were to cheap to spring for chocolate. Does anyone make an alcoholic beverage out of fermented candy corn? Not that I want to drink it, but can you think of anything better to do with candy corn?

 

Finally, I discovered a new beverage that satisfies. It’s crisp, clean and refreshing, like a mountain stream.

It tastes great, and it’s even less filling than lite beer. In fact this new beverage tastes remarkably similar to lite beer, yet has 0 calories. Count ‘em! …0… That’s nothin’!

 

I am so confident that this new beverage will take America by storm, that I have invested in a new company to market it. This beverage has such universal appeal that I believe everyone, I mean everyone should try it. We call this new beverage Beer Free

 

Beer Free

• Contains no alcohol, so it’s safe for children

• Contains no beer, hence the name

• Has no calories, so it won’t make you fat

• Has no gluten, so your girlfriend will stop nagging you about the gluten.

• Is produced without pesticides or preservatives, and made from the finest natural ingredient on Earth

 

Beer Free suits your active modern lifestyle

• you can drink it all day long, and drive home without having to worry about pesky cops and their breathalyzer tests

• you can have one with breakfast without drawing disapproving looks from teetotalers

• you can drink it at work without fear that it might jeopardize your career

• you can use it to wash down other drugs, without worrying about dangerous synergistic effects

 

…And nothing… nothing on Earth.. soothes the throat after a major bong blast better, or quenches chronic cotton-mouth faster than water…er… I mean Beer Free!

 

Try Beer Free today!

 

Growing Marijuana is A Labor of Love in Humboldt County

Growing Marijuana is A Labor of Love in Humboldt County

Well Spring is almost here, which means that all over Humboldt County, marijuana farmers are incredibly busy preparing to grow even more marijuana than they did last year. Even as you read this piece, most of them are hard at work building new greenhouses, clearing more forest land, putting in new water tanks and digging gigantic holes all over the countryside.

This process involves hundreds of thousands of man-hours of backbreaking labor and requires millions of dollars in capital investment.

 

This capital comes almost entirely from the sale of last year’s record setting marijuana harvest. Since most of last year’s marijuana harvest has not sold yet, this investment cuts deeply into the grower’s disposable income. Few feel the pinch however, as they will have little time or energy to do anything else for a few months, but prepare for this year’s grow.

 

Why do they do it? So they don’t have to get a job, of course. Who wants to work for a living when you can grow marijuana, right? You’d think, but you’d be wrong. In Humboldt County, growing marijuana is a labor of love, crazy love.

 

Soon thousands of tractor trailers full of potting soil will clog our roads as they make their way into the hills to fill the millions of holes these growers have so diligently dug.

Every year, Humboldt County’s garden supply stores comb the nation for another sparsely populated and poorly guarded county that they can steal. They then dig up the entire county in the dead of night, pack it into bags labeled “Potting Soil” and smuggle it back to Humboldt County where they quickly sell it off on a strictly cash basis to Humboldt County marijuana farmers.

 

Somewhere in Wyoming, or perhaps North Dakota, one morning soon, the citizens of this unfortunate county will step off their front porch on their way to work, only to fall several feet, smack into the bedrock below. They will look up to see their home delicately balanced on jacks and cinder blocks, and realize that their entire lawn, and the soil which once supported the foundation of their homes, has been stolen overnight while they slept.

 

For them, it will already be too late. Their county has already been sold, distributed, and secreted away behind locked gates, where it will remain, protected by a constitutionally guaranteed right of privacy. Besides, few of them could positively identify the soil from under their own homes, especially now that it has been thoroughly sifted and blended with a myriad of exotic amendments.

 

If you visit any of Humboldt County’s garden supply stores, you will find an amazing array of colorfully packaged, and even more colorfully named, fertilizers and soil amendments ranging from liquified fish guts from Alaska’s salmon canneries to ancient fossilized bat guano from caves deep within the jungles of Peru. Most Humboldt County garden shops also offer their own brands of fertilizers that they make on site, mostly from composted US currency.

 

Many of these fertilizers and soil amendments feature cheeky pin-up girls on the labels. This feature, along with the fact that these products sell for more per pound than fresh organic strawberries in January, indicate that these products are intended for use on marijuana plants. Only female marijuana plants produce marijuana, and marijuana growers often refer to their plants as “their ladies”.

 

You’ll often hear marijuana farmers say things like: “My ladies are lookin’ fine.” or “I take care of my ladies, and my ladies take care of me.” or “I need to to get home and hoe my ladies.” This makes them sound more like pimps than farmers, and greatly contributes to the general classiness of Humboldt County.

 

Can you imagine other kinds of farmers talking this way about their crops? Picture a dairy farmer saying “My ladies give me the sweetest cream.” or a broccoli farmer saying “This heat is gonna make my ladies bolt.” or a cabbage farmer saying “My ladies are full of horn-worms.” Creepy, huh?

 

All of this talk about their “ladies” belies the fact that most marijuana farmers are single and live alone. Growing marijuana in a remote, sparsely populated rural area like Humboldt County is a very lonely and isolating profession that tends to attract social misfits and people with self-alienating personalities.

 

The more lonely and isolated the marijuana farmer becomes, the more they tend to talk to, get naked around, and masturbate in front of, their “ladies”, often while looking at the pictures on boxes of fertilizer. This kind of “intimacy” with “their ladies”, coupled with an otherwise isolated existence builds a special kind of relationship between the cultivator and the cultivated that most other farmers, or sane people would not understand.

Original Artwork by Mykol Blackwell

Soon, the marijuana farmer no longer grows marijuana to make money, and instead, makes money to grow marijuana. For these people, nothing is too good for “their ladies”, and they cannot have enough of them. They work harder, and spend more money to pamper “their ladies” than any sane farmer. This is the real reason why Humboldt County marijuana growers produce the best marijuana in the world, and more of it than any place else on Earth.

 

Over the years, because of their extreme devotion and isolation, many Humboldt County marijuana growers have gone totally bat-shit crazy, and fallen in love with “their ladies” in this way. This is why they work so hard, and spend so much money on, “their ladies”.  Every year, more of them go “over the edge”, and every year this “crazy love” impacts our forest habitat more intensely.

 

Personally, I enjoy smoking marijuana, and strongly believe it should be legalized, so that sane farmers, with tractors, and flat land to till, can grow it economically.

I also know that marijuana provides relief for millions of sick people who should have unfettered access to it, at the lowest price possible, but I also care about this community.

That’s why I feel that something must be done to stop Humboldt County’s marijuana farmers before it’s too late. It has become clear to me, that nothing short of intervention, can save these poor souls, and our natural environment from this serious mental disorder.

 

Multiple Fatalities in Raid on Indoor Grow

BREAKING NEWS: Eureka, CA

Multiple Fatalities in Raid on Indoor Grow

 

Officers from the DEA, the Humboldt County SWAT Team, the Sheriff’s Drug Enforcement Unit and Animal Welfare Division conducted a raid on an indoor grow operation in a high-rise apartment complex in Eureka today resulting in multiple fatalities. While details remain sketchy, neighbors report hearing sustained gunfire and a large explosion from within the building, and seeing one dead body on the sidewalk outside.

 

After the raid, ambulance crews removed numerous bodies from the building, including those of several uniformed law-enforcement officers, but at this point, the total body count remains unclear. Like You’ve Got Something Better To Do has obtained exclusive video footage of the raid recorded on the building’s closed circuit TV surveillance system. VIEWER DISCRETION ADVISED!!!

 

Hello, My Name is Civilization, and I’m an Alcoholic

Hello, My Name is Civilization, and I’m an Alcoholic

 

OK, I’m going to squeeze an enormous idea into a short, not too boring essay. Try to hang with me on this. Civilization began with something called “the agricultural revolution”. That is, a fundamental shift from a hunting and gathering lifestyle, to a farming lifestyle. This farming lifestyle led to permanent settlements, which then grew into cities, and eventually, into the civilization we know today. The question is: Why did they do it?

 

To start, lets take a very long look at human history. According to fossil evidence, people just like us, have inhabited this planet for well over one million years. One million years ago, all humans lived in Africa, and all humans lived very much like the San Bushmen of the Calihari Desert live today.

 

The San are a “hunting and gathering” culture. They plant no crops. They tend no livestock. Instead, they hunt wild game and gather wild plants for food. They have no written language, but have a very rich oral tradition. Even though the San have been pushed into some of the most inhospitable land on the African continent, they only work about four hours a day to meet their daily needs. They rarely go hungry, and enjoy better nutrition and more food security than do the farming people who now surround them.

 

The San enjoy a lot of leisure time, which they spend telling stories, making music, dancing and playing games, among other things. They have a rich culture, and that culture contains over one million years of accumulated knowledge about how to live on planet Earth. That knowledge allows them to flourish in the middle of a desert, while the farming people around them, who have forcibly taken all of the good land, work long hours, suffer from poor nutrition, and often starve.

 

But one million years ago, there were no farming people. All humans lived a hunting and gathering lifestyle, not unlike the San. Over the course of the last one million years, hunting and gathering humans spread out over Asia and Europe, and eventually even Australia and the Americas. This spread of humanity happened at a glacial pace, but by about 40,000 years ago, damn near every place on Earth that would support human life, was, albeit sparsely, inhabited by humans. This slow spread of hunter-gatherer culture gave rise to the vast diversity of sustainable human cultures around the world, from the Inuit to the Yanomami.

 

40,000 years ago, humans lived all over the world, quite happily, as hunters and gatherers. I’m not saying that they didn’t have problems, or that they didn’t fight. They had problems, and they fought, but they didn’t destroy the planet. They didn’t overpopulate the planet. They didn’t overheat the planet, and they didn’t work 40-50 hours a week just to get by.

 

So, the question is: Why, among the thousands of indigenous cultures around the world, did just one particular culture in the Middle-East, reject the collective knowledge of a million years of culture, and begin farming?

 

Farming is a lot of work, and not much fun. Compared to hunting and picking berries, plowing a field with a rock tied to a stick must have seemed quite tedious. Why did they do it?

 

If you’ve got plenty of food, which fossil records tell us they did, why would you plant wheat and barley? Even more perplexing: Why would they sacrifice the habitat of the game animals and wild plants that had sustained them for eons, to clear fields for wheat and barley?

 

That is what happened, by the way. One particular culture in the Middle-East took up farming, even though they had plenty of food, and then proceeded to farm so aggressively and so passionately, that they completely destroyed their own habitat. They wiped out all of the game animals and wild plants that they had relied on since the beginning of time. What was their motivation? What madness possessed them? What did they get out of wheat and barley that was worth destroying the world for?

 

The answer of course is BEER. Think about it awhile. Many indigenous hunter-gatherer tribes drink fermented alcoholic beverages on occasion, usually following an abundant fruit harvest, but the founders of civilization, sought to make drunkenness a daily, rather than an annual event.

Addiction is a very powerful motivator.

Yes, all of civilization is a dysfunctional adjustment made to support an alcoholic lifestyle. Don’t you think its time that we faced the fact that we have a problem?

 

‘Twas the Night Before Christmas in Humboldt

‘Twas the Night Before Christmas in Humboldt

 

‘Twas the night before Christmas and all through Humboldt County

Not a creature was stirring, not even Sheriff Mike Downey

The herb was all trimmed up and packed into bags

For smokers of taste, who will not smoke swag

Me in bed naked, my wife in her panties

It’s that time of month, so it’s the ones that are ratty

When out at the gate there arose such a racket

I got out of bed and put on my jacket

Threw on some pants and picked up my rifle

So they’d know I was serious and not to trifle

I stepped out of the door and into the rain

“To be out in this shit, this guy must be insane”

I thought to myself as I trudged up the path,

“This better be good or he’ll feel my wrath”

What did my dumb struck eyes then behold

But a bearded old man in a late model Olds

I yelled “It’s Christmas Eve, are you out of your mind?”

He said “I’m Jewish, you’re Pagan, why’s this a bad time?

My friends all need weed, and I’ve plenty of cash,

At $3,000 a pound, I’ll take your whole stash”

I thought to myself, “Well that’s quite a laugh,

These days I’d a probably sold it for half.”

He showed me a bag that was packed full of bills

I opened the gate and we drove down the hill

I made up some coffee, and rolled up a jay

And showed him a few of the buds on the tray

“Oh, this is the stuff that my friends all love.

They say that your stuff is a cut above.

They’ll pay what I ask for all I can get.

Did you have a good year? Is it all trimmed up yet?”

“This year I grew more than ever before,

It’s weighed up in bags just behind that door.

You can inspect it while I count this cash,

Hand me that ashtray, and I’ll knock this ash.”

We packed all the weed in the trunk of his car.

I said, “You found me out here, you must know where you are”.

“Oh yes, he said, “I’ll find my way out from here,

And I’ve many more stops to make, far and near.”

He started the car, and then turned on the lights,

And I heard him say, as he drove out of sight,

“Marijuana to all, and to all a good night.”

 

Crack Heads, Flu Season, Fake Crises and Bill Gates

Crack Heads, Flu Season, Fake Crises and Bill Gates

 

Look, I know most of you don’t read this blog to learn about economics or for articles about science. You should. Just because I’m a fool, doesn’t mean I don’t know what I’m talking about, but I know you don’t give a shit about economics or science, you just want me to say something stupid enough for you to chuckle at, and make it snappy. I know I’m just a short stop on your craven quest for amusement.

For you, immediate gratification takes too long. You don’t want context, edification, or even a set-up. You don’t even want to read a punchline, you just want the punch. You’re looking for a crack-house where you can free-base funny. Even a one-liner is too long, if it’s over 140 characters. You’re like, alright, I’ll read one line, but skip the vowels and punctuation, I haven’t got all day.

So flu season is upon us again. This year many Americans will contract the Mexican Swine Flu because they can no longer afford German Measles. I suggest they hold out for the Chinese Bird Flu. I’m sure it will be a bargain. Some people won’t be able to make up their minds, they’ll be like “Mexican or Chinese… I had Chinese for lunch, I’ll have Mexican flu this year”. With the Chinese Bird Flu you wish you were dead, and you think you can fly, but if you sweat it out 14 hours a day seven days a week you can survive it. Speaking of China, what do people in China call their nice plates? …And why doesn’t anyone catch American made diseases anymore?

Speaking of American made diseases, while Congress wrestles with the ‘Fiscal Cliff” and the “Debt Ceiling” I though I might help them get a jump on their next fake crisis scam. How about these fake-crisis-scam names:

“Taxageddon”

“Financial Firestorm”

“The Deathstar of Debt”

“Economic Tsunami”

“Entitlement Apocalypse”

“Health-Care Holocaust”

“Thermonuclear Budget Bomb”

Don’t those all sound scary? I now own the copyright to all of these fake-crisis-scam names, and dozens more. I would be happy to license any of them to Congress and the media.

I got this brilliant idea after I realized that if I had a nickle for every time a politician or media pundit mentioned “the Fiscal Cliff”, I could afford to hire Bill Gates to empty my ashtray and clean my bong. So keep some pipe cleaners in your pocket-protector Bill, the next fake crisis scam is right around the corner.