Halloween Spider Spectacular

Halloween Spider Spectacular

 

I love spiders. I have hundreds of pictures of them. We have a lot spiders here in SoHum. They inhabit these woods and our home in great abundance and variety. I find them endlessly fascinating and very much enjoy their company. They make great subjects for photography. Unlike most wild animals, they tend to sit still, which makes the job a lot easier.

I have a lot of respect for spiders. They’ve “seen” a lot on this here rock. According to archeologists, spiders’ ancient ancestors were among the first sea animals to venture onto dry land, and they colonized it aggressively. 200 million years ago, 50 millions years before the first insects, flying or otherwise, most of the major spider families of modern times, had already achieved worldwide distribution.

God only knows what they ate for those first 50 million years or so, but clearly, spiders have remarkable survival skills. For 150 million years they have adapted to everything that nature has thrown at them, including us, and they continue to flourish. Even as we instigate cataclysmic changes in our environment, triggering a massive wave of extinction around the globe, perhaps including our own, spiders seem to mostly take it all in stride.

Those who call human beings the dominant species on the planet, should consider this: Spiders outnumber us, all together they outweigh us, and they will almost certainly outlast us. In their long history on this planet, the rise and fall of humanity will amount to nothing but a brief, insignificant memory to them, like a TV show that lasted only one season, or a long evening spent with a rude dinner companion.

In our unholy quest to transform all of creation to our own purposes, we have never found a way to exploit spiders for commercial purposes, nor have we ever successfully weaponized spiders. Despite their large numbers and close proximity, they don’t compete with us for anything. They carry on all around us, unnoticed, mostly unstudied, and completely undaunted, patiently awaiting the day when they will, inevitably, bury us in cobwebs like they did the dinosaurs, the wooly mammoth and the saber-toothed tiger.

I used the word “seen” in quotes earlier, because most spiders have very poor vision. Spiders gather most of their sensory information from the extremely sensitive hairs on their legs and bodies. These hairs can detect very subtle air movements and vibrations. Web spiders also “see” with their webs, using their legs to sense every ripple and wave that passes through it.

While most of the creatures in the animal kingdom now take stereoscopic vision for granted, most spiders have a very different, and much more rudimentary visual system. Most spiders have an array of eight or more somewhat directionally focused eyes. However, these tiny eyes, in most cases, probably don’t send enough information to produce a meaningful image. They can probably tell, for instance, that it is darker to their left, than to their right, but little more.

Because of this unusual visual system spider faces seem especially alien to us. I think this may have a lot to do with our attitude towards them. Even insects, with their single pair of large compound eyes, seem more like us, than spiders. While many people dislike annoying flies, few people fear them. On the other hand, spiders rarely annoy anyone, but many people fear them. While many flying insects actively seek us out and bite us, leaving painful, itchy welts, spiders only bite in self defense, and even then, only rarely.

A few spiders see very well, with stereoscopic vision, and use it to navigate their world, and hunt prey. Both wolf spiders and jumping spiders respond primarily to visual stimuli, and they both have especially large eyes, for spiders. Neither wolf spiders, nor jumping spiders content themselves to spin webs and wait for whatever comes along. In stead these spiders go out into the world, with big bright, sharply focused eyes, looking for fun and adventure.

Wolf Spider

With a large pair of front facing eyes, jumping spiders have especially endearing faces. Most jumping spiders stay quite small, but here in SoHum, I have seen some fairly large ones, at least big enough to photograph.

The spiders I find most endearing, however, are the ones I know most intimately, and I know them so intimately because they have lived with us for so long, and in such great numbers. “Daddy Long-Legs” spiders (Pholcus Phalangiodes) make cheerful easy going housemates, even if they do leave their webs and food remains all over the house.

They have a reputation for cannibalism, but I’ve never seen it. Quite the contrary. These spiders seem extremely tolerant of each other, and unlike most spiders, spend a lot of time in close proximity to each other, sharing the same web. I’ve often seen large pholcids steal food from smaller ones, but I’ve never seen a large pholcid attack a small one. I’ve seen them eat other spiders, including wolf spiders at least as large as themselves, but never each other.

Large and small pholcids happily share the same web, stepping over and around each other without hostility or fear. I’ve even seen two pholcids work together to “rope” a large fly snared in their shared web. The fly would have doubtless have struggled free from either of them, but working together they were able to subdue it. The two spiders then shared their meal.

I’ve watched them quite a bit, and for a year or so, I kept a journal of their daily lives and development. I gave them names like “Charlotte” “Wilbur” and “Templeton” and followed them from early adolescence, through several molts, to adulthood, mating and parenthood.

Pholcids love tenderly, and spend a lot of time “holding hands” with their chosen partner before mating. While male and female pholcids look identical to the naked eye for most of their lives, a mature and receptive female puts on a spectacular outfit to accentuate her femininity. She will invariably attract a mature male, perhaps a few, and she will eventually decide between them.

Female, in her sexy mating outfit, on right.

Then the couple will spend several days, up to two weeks or more, hanging out very close together in this “hand holding” phase. I’ve never seen pholcids mate. I think they do it in the dead of night while we are asleep, but soon, the female will have an egg sack clutched I her jaws. I have however, caught other species of spider in the act, I don’t think I’ll lose my wordpress account for posting hard-core spider-porn here.

Some would argue that these tiny invertebrates, lack any capacity for caring or emotion, but I disagree. One of these two young lovers got pinched in a window screen and died from the injury. It’s partner stayed with the dead spider for almost a week afterward. Yes, I believe that spiders love, and mourn.

Pholcid mothers devote themselves completely to raising their offspring. Once a pholcid mother has an egg sac in her jaws, she will not eat again until the young spiderlings have grown up and moved out.  It takes several weeks for the eggs to incubate and hatch, and the young spiderlings stay with their mother for at least two more weeks, until their first molt.

Mama Pholcid with newly hatched spiderlings

After they molt, the young spiders strike out on their own, leaving their mother, in her web, surrounded by dozens of tiny, recently shed, exoskeletons. Female pholcids can raise more than one brood of spiderlings. Occasionally, I’ll find a mother pholcid with an egg sac, surrounded by the exoskeletons of her previous brood. I guess I should dust more.

I hope you enjoyed the Halloween Spider Spectacular. Happy Halloween!

Mama pholcid with babies just about ready to move out

Doping Hurts Everyone, Especially Drug Enthusiasts

Doping Hurts Everyone, Especially Drug Enthusiasts

 

Well they stripped Lance Armstrong of his 7 Tour de France titles, leaving those races unwon in the annals of international cycling. As a recreational drug user, you might think that since I take drugs myself, it wouldn’t bother me so much that athletes use steroids, human growth hormone and god knows what else to improve their performance, but you’d be wrong. I find this explosion of the use of performance enhancing drugs particularly insidious, and it really pisses me off.

Like life doesn’t suck enough for people of normal abilities, now they have to worry about everyone else using drugs to edge them out of jobs, sports, college, game shows and even dates.  I remember cocaine as the first popular performance enhancing drug, and look at what a nightmare that turned into. I don’t think we have recovered yet, as a society, from the damage it caused.

Before cocaine, we took drugs to impair performance, or at least we accepted that side-effect as part of the experience. No one thought of partying as particularly competitive. We took drugs because they made us feel good, not because they made us feel better than other people.

Cocaine changed all of that. Suddenly, partying became a competitive sport. It wasn’t enough anymore, to smoke a joint, have a few drinks, relax and unwind with your friends. Instead, while you got quietly shitfaced, your friends all started talking faster than a caffeinated auctioneer. They were still dancing at 2:00 AM, when most decent people have already passed out in a puddle of their own vomit.

Most of them didn’t even dance before cocaine, but after the cocaine, if you wanted to hang with them, it was going to cost you. Then, all of these cocaine people started to get really competitive at work, because they needed more money to afford all of the cocaine they took. They started identifying with the boss’ greed more than with their coworkers interests.

Cocaine had as much to do with the collapse of labor unions in America as Ron Reagan, and the two worked together, hand in glove. Instead of standing together, we were all too busy running back and forth to the bathroom, trying to get the edge on each other, selling each other out, and screwing each other over.

All of those cocaine idiots eventually crashed and burned, but we’ve never recovered, as a nation, from the moral decay we suffered as a result of the cocaine epidemic. To this day, we remain a nation of greedy, superficial, backbiting egomaniacs. That’s real damage, folks! Cocaine turned us into a nation of assholes who systematically exterminate human decency for profit.

It’s not enough just to show up for work anymore. Now, they expect you to push yourself to exhaustion, just like a coke-head, and they’re always pushing you to improve your performance, because everything is so competitive these days. Why, do you suppose, is everything so competitive these days? It’s because cocaine turned us all against each other, and we’ve never been able to trust each other since.

I still enjoy drugs, but I take them because they feel good, or because I want to have a drug experience, not because I think they give me an edge over other people. People like Lance Armstrong, who strive to be exceptional, and especially those who juice themselves with performance enhancing drugs, make life harder for the rest of us who just want to show up, go through the motions, and draw a paycheck. For that, they should be punished severely.

Dirtbags, Miscreants, Undesirables and Low-Lifes pt.2

Dope Yuppies Suck

 

The L.A. Times recently ran a story about Humboldt County and the marijuana industry here, and the story echoed a common myth about this area that really deserves some analysis. You will hear this myth often repeated on KMUD, and reflected in Kym Kemp’s blog Redheaded Blackbelt. They both do their best to disseminate propaganda for the marijuana industry, and between them they’ve done a pretty good job of putting their spin on things. After all, the marijuana industry is still a pretty secretive business, and news gathering has become a relatively passive activity these days, so it’s not surprising that this myth gets so much traction in the press, but it’s about time someone took a closer look at it.

So, here’s the myth: The people who moved to Southern Humboldt in the late 70’s and early 80’s, like to paint themselves as the “back to the land” movement. They moved here to escape Babylon, and built little cabins, grew organic veggies, made arts and crafts, and raised a family. They grew just enough marijuana to pay their taxes, support their favorite non-profit, and put a pair of used tires on their old truck.

On the other hand, the myth continues, if you moved here during the 90’s or, god forbid, this century, you’re only here for the money. It’s these “newcomers” who brought in the big diesel generators, and started these giant industrial mega-grows. It’s these “newcomers” who spill diesel fuel in the creeks, pump our rivers dry, and spread rat poison all over. It’s the “newcomers” who drive like maniacs on our roads, bring hard drugs into our community, and dump trash in the river.

You see, according to this myth, it’s only the people who’ve been here 30 years, not the people whose families have been here a hundred years, or the people whose ancestors have been here for thousands of years, who form the true “community” around here. If you’ve been here longer than them, you are a redneck, if you’ve arrived since them, you are a carpetbagger, but if you’ve been here for 30 years, no longer, and no shorter, you are part of the twelfth tribe of Israel. The myth tells us that the people who’ve been here 30 years, take impeccable care of their land, manage it wisely, and use the money they make to fight injustice all over the world. Don’t they sound like awesome people?

The truth is a very different story:

Back in the 70’s and 80’s, most of the people around here bought their land from a guy named Bob McKee. They all love Bob because he would buy large tracts of logged over timber land, dirt cheap, and then break them up into parcels small enough that pretty much anyone who wanted one could afford one.

You could never make a living logging these small parcels, and there weren’t any jobs, to speak of, anywhere in the vicinity, so this low priced land became attractive to artists, who don’t have to worry so much about their commute, but also don’t make much money. At one time Humboldt County had more artists per-capita, than any county in California. That’s why Summer Arts Fest is older than The Mateel. The artists in SoHum needed that outlet, more than they needed a place to party. That was 37 years ago.

Thirty years ago, Ronald Reagan disrupted the flow of marijuana from South America and Mexico, and very suddenly, people started buying up those cheap parcels, specifically to grow marijuana. Bob McKee got rich, and all of a sudden, almost anyone with a green thumb, and bit of chutzpah, could make a living from the privacy that these forested mountains provide.

So, these people who moved here 30 years ago, all moved here to grow pot. They bought cheap, logged over timber land, built homes with outhouses without permits, diverted streams, and grew marijuana illegally to make money. They made pretty good money growing pot, so they started buying up the parcels around them. Their drug-dealing friends in the city, who came up here for the lavish parties these folks threw, started buying parcels as well.

Some of these people were greedier than others, some of them were more competent than others, but they all partied a lot. They brought hard drugs like heroin, cocaine and meth, which have remained epidemic ever since.

They drove like maniacs, like their kids do today, and they made huge messes up in the hills. They buried piles of car batteries. They changed their oil in their driveway, letting the spent oil seep into the ground, and they abandoned thousands of vehicles all over the hillsides of Southern Humboldt, and that was just the beginning.

 

photo credit Humboldt Sentinel
http://humboldtsentinel.com/2012/01/13/weekly-roundup-for-january-13-2012/

People who’ve owned their property since the eighties don’t really need much income anymore to cover the basics. They paid their land off decades ago, and thanks to proposition 13, many still pay less than a thousand dollars a year in property tax, at least on the parcel they actually live on.

For most of them, however, the basics were not enough. They like to party. They want to go to a dozen festivals every summer, winter in Hawaii, ride around on quads, watch movies on their big screen TVs, and if their local non-profits can pour beer, they want to support them too. You see, they just want regular “middle-class” stuff, and marijuana provides that for them, but it gets to be a chore.

Growing all of that marijuana starts to feel like work. So what do you do if you own a few parcels of land, and you want the income from all of them, but you don’t actually want to do the work of growing the marijuana? You want to hire people, but you don’t really want them show up at your place and punch a time-clock, and you really don’t want to cut them a check every week. You want them to grow pot for you, sell it, and give you the money, and you want some insulation from the risky side of the business. Here’s what you do.

You “sell” them a turnkey business. Here’s how this works. You find an up and coming drug dealer, who’s already moving a lot of weed for you. You teach him how to grow, introduce him to your clone supplier, and help him set up his generator, pump, lights and fans. You offer to “sell” him one of your SoHum parcels for a price based on the expected profits from the weed grown there in the next ten years. You draw up a land contract, and you “loan” him, the money that you expect to be payed for your share of the weed. Then you turn the operation over to him.

You see, you “sold” that parcel, that you originally traded a motorcycle for, for $250,000, to a 28 year old guy with no job, and $50,000 in small bills. There’s now a big ugly diesel scene and a giant, water sucking industrial mega-grow on it. You get all of the profits, and some drug dealing kid from the city takes all of the risk and does all of the work. He’s in possession of the land, should the cops ever raid it, so you can deny any knowledge of what goes on there, and you can legally repossess it, if he ever fails to make the payments.

Not that long ago real estate agents around here sold land, generators and lights together as a package, and advertized them in local papers. For decades now, all of the land sold around here, sells at a price based on the value of the marijuana that can be grown there, and the county happily appraises this land at the inflated prices.

So, if you moved here recently, besides paying through the nose for your land, you likely pay three times what your neighbor pays in property tax. You still can’t make a living from the timber on one of these parcels, and there are still very few jobs in the vicinity, but these parcels no longer sell at prices that artists or writers can afford. No, every parcel sells as a prime marijuana gold mine, with a price determined by how much marijuana the buyer and seller think they can pull out of it.

The people who sign those land contracts, often as not, get busted, shot to death in a drug deal gone bad, or simply fail to deliver the cash, so they lose the property, and we never see them around again. It’s a huge ripoff, and it’s just one of the ways that the people who’ve been here thirty years, feed on young people like vampires, growing ever richer, and more smug about themselves, while they destroy habitat, drive endangered species to extinction, and enslave the young.

Most of the rentals in SoHum work the same way. Landlords expect tenants to grow for them, and use the lease as legal insulation. The dope yuppies who’ve been here thirty years know how few opportunities there are for young people, and they look for desperate young people to take advantage of.

The people who’ve been here thirty years have engineered the marijuana industry here. They employ, and exploit the army of young growers, share-croppers, dealers, mules and trimmers that you see around town. They are responsible for the giant mega-grows, the water diversions, the rat poison, and all of the problems and pollution that goes along with them, and they make sure that no young people today, ever get the kind of deal that Bob McKee gave them.

Its time to legalize marijuana, and drive a stake through the heart of the dope yuppie lifestyle. Legalization would help the salmon. Legalization would help the fishers, and legalization would help everyone who likes to smoke herb, or needs it for medicine. Legalization will only hurt a small clique of people who moved here thirty years ago, got lucky, exploited the land, took advantage of people, and have gotten way too smug about it. Really, no one deserves it more.

Dirtbags, Miscreants, Undesirables and Low-Lifes pt1

Dirtbags, Miscreants, Undesirables and Low-Lifes pt1

 

I’ve heard a lot of talk about the invasion of “dirtbags”, “miscreants”, and “undesirables” in our community. I agree with a lot of this talk. I agree that this invasion has gotten out of hand. Every town can handle a few “dirtbags”, but they have overrun our small town.

This invasion has gone on far too long, and its high time we took decisive action to take back our community. These “people”, I use the term loosely here, wreck our environment, suck up our resources and tear at the very fabric of our society.

I also agree that we should do everything we can to drive these undesirables from our midst. We should make them feel unwelcome. We should insist that the Sheriff enforce every law that applies to them, punish them to the fullest extent of the law, and, if that’s not enough, we should pass draconian new laws that persecute them more directly.

I am in complete agreement with the sentiment I see expressed in our local papers, and hear around town. We should take back our community. We should drive “them” out of town. My only disagreement with the prevailing sentiment, is who exactly “them” are.

This week, part one of a two part series about “them”, the real “undesirables” and “miscreants” who suck the life out of our community. For part one, I offer this letter to the editor of The Independent, inspired by one of the letters I read there on this issue. A highly abridged version of this letter will appear in The Independent, but I thought you deserved to see it in its entirety.

Dear Editor,

I cheered and said “good riddance” the day I saw that Country Real Estate had closed their Garberville office. I had hoped that would be the last we would see or hear from George Rolff, so reading his repulsive letter in The Independent disgusted me doubly.

I am not writing to weigh in on the issue of people hanging around in Garberville and Redway. I know that the abundance of poor people around town creates a real challenge for the retail merchants in town. It really is a lot for them to deal with, and the marijuana growers in the hills should step up to the plate on this issue.

After all, kids all over America smoke Humboldt weed, listen to reggae music, and pretty soon, they start to believe in it. They say “goodbye” to Babylon, grow dreadlocks, and come here. They know that all of their money has been coming here for years, and they think that folks here have been using it to “make Babylon fall”, instead of blowing it on status symbols like oversized diesel trucks. They don’t realize that the marijuana industry is a bottomless pit of greed and indifference that wants to suck them dry.

One of arguments I hear the most, from the people who make their living from marijuana, yet oppose legalization, is that, in a legal environment, big corporations like JR Reynolds would take over the industry. RJ Reynolds spends billions of dollars funding cancer research, and medical facilities, and millions more on public art. They’ve learned that they can buy some respect, if they take some responsibility for the social problems they create. Folks around here might take a lesson from the tobacco giant when considering what facilities to include in that new community park they are all so proud of. We don’t really need another expensive “middle-class” status symbol for drug dealers around here.

But that’s not what pissed me off about George Rolff’s letter. What pissed me off about Geoge Rolff’s letter is that someone in the real estate industry had the nerve to complain about all of the poor people around town. If the marijuana industry is a bottomless pit, the real estate industry is the Grand Canyon of greed and indifference, as perfectly exemplified by Mr. Rolff’s attitude in his offensive letter.

While bankers orchestrated the housing bubble and the collapse of our economy, the real estate industry acted as their highly paid mercenary army. During those bubble years, people like George Rolff, Blake Lehman, and the rest of the real estate industry collected obscene commissions on inflated land prices. They made those deals that went bad. They appraised land at those ridiculously inflated prices. They turned housing into a luxury that only the rich could afford. They made millions of people homeless, and they got filthy rich doing it.

I saw George’s Harley, and his wife Melinda’s Mustang. They wanted everyone to know that they were doing well. Thanks to them, a lot of people in town aren’t doing very well. Personally, I find conspicuous consumption much more offensive than conspicuous poverty, and I find complaints about poor people, from people in the real estate industry particularly odious.

It is not a crime to be poor, but what the real estate industry did to our nation, our community, and our economy was a crime against the American people. It’s shameful for George Rolff to blame his victims, and to attempt to sweep them under the rug.

Poem; At The Poetry Slam

I don’t know how you feel about poetry, but I don’t care for it much. To me, it’s just a job. I write poetry to pay the rent, and finance the work I really care about, like this blog. You’ll find information about how to acquire my recently released book of poetry at the end of the poem.

At the Poetry Slam

So who have we got here at the poetry slam

A paunchy, and balding, and bearded old man

 

What could this old fart possibly have to say

He’s not young, he’s not hip, and he’s not even gay

Well there’s nothing on earth that my verse can’t reveal

If I can’t describe it then it can’t be real

And the poems that I am about to read

Will make you all laugh till you fall down and bleed

Then when you try to get up and sue

Just about the silliest thing you could do

Because I am a poet without any money

I’ll write on your summons a note to my honey

Fill it with lots of vain sentiment

In hopes that I can get her to pay the month’s rent

Now when it comes to poems, there’s a lot to hate

And even the best really ain’t that great

Some read Cummings, and write in blank verse

That crap is always some of the worst

Some act thuggish, and all hip-hoppy

Those beats are so lame, and the lyrics are sloppy

Then there’s the ones that are strung out on booze

Thinkin’ they got nothin’ else to lose

They scribble a line when er they are able

At least one or two before they’re under the table

What does it matter if their poems are good

If they can’t keep their head up off a floor made of wood?

So who have we got here at this poetry slam

You know that I really don’t give a damn

Unless its a chick who digs guys that can rhyme

Then its my lucky night and I’ll have a good time

The above poem, and about 40 others like it, appears in my recently published book of poetry, titled: Please, Not Poetry, Anything But Poetry; A Terse Book of Verse for the Poetry Averse. You can purchase your own copy of Please, Not Poetry, Anything But Poetry at Booklegger Books in Eureka, and at King Range Books in Garberville, the only bookstore in Garberville that celebrates local writers.

On The Money; What’s Wrong With Economists

On The Money;

Economics for the 99%

What’s Wrong With Economists

Most economists write for policy wonks, not regular people. While they study consumer behavior and worker productivity, they have little, if anything, to say to consumers or workers. They might have something to say to voters, but only because they endorse a policy favored by a particular candidate. Economists write their books for the candidates, the political think-tanks, the rich and powerful and their advisers, but not for us, the 99%.

 

While economists may have some respect for you as a voter, as a worker, producer and consumer, you are simply a pawn to them. Something to be pushed around by fiscal policy, corporate coercion, and government taxation. Your life, energy, time, creativity and spirit mean no more to them than so many barrels of oil, tons of molybdenum or bushels of corn, and they don’t write economics books for bushels of corn.

 

To economists you are just a commodity to be bought and sold, consumed and discarded, just another anonymous drone, toiling away at meaningless work, in an empty life that you fill with pointless consumption. They don’t want you to read their books. They want you to go shopping, and let them, along with Americas smartest and greediest, worry about what’s best for the economy.

 

As a result, we now have an economy engineered entirely to help the richest and greediest acquire more. This economy demands that the rest of us sacrifice more and more of our lives, and our planet, every year, for their benefit. No, economists don’t want us to read their books, they want us to spend more time at work, more money for housing, and more money for health care. They want us to accept lower wages, give up job security, and to get used to being disposable.

That’s how they save “the economy”. As soon as we get used to working longer and harder for less, accept the destruction of the environment as a necessary evil, and learn to step around the human garbage left in their wake, the economy will be fine. Isn’t that great! As long as we’re willing to sacrifice our lives for it, the economy will be just fine.

Yet, too many of us still worry about “the economy”. Is it growing? How fast is it growing? Are prices rising? How’s the stock market? Who worries about us?

Why does it cost so much, just to have a place to live? How do the long hours I spend at work affect my family? How much of my current lifestyle would I choose, were I not economically coerced into working full time? How will global climate change affect my quality of life, or my children’s? Mightn’t I appreciate a clean environment more, if I had more time to enjoy it? Should I participate in a system in which I have no value, except as an exploitable resource? Why should economic growth trump all of these real human concerns? Whose job is it to think about these things? Not economists, that’s for sure.

How can you leverage maximum productivity from employees? How will environmental regulation effect energy prices? How does depression and suicide effect corporate earnings? That’s how economists look at these problems, and that’s why economists suck.

In On The Money, Economics For the 99%, I take the radical position that economics is about people, and how they interact with each other and the environment. Instead of simply looking for ways to help the rich and powerful increase, and accelerate the flow of money into their own bank accounts, On The Money; Economics for the 99% exposes the fundamental flaws in the capitalist system that have led to the gross inequality, and catastrophic environmental destruction that define our time. On the Money; Economics for the 99% shows you how to reclaim your life and liberate the world from the greedy clutches of the 1%, one step at a time.

Three Letters that Spell Success

Three Letters that Spell Success

 

I’ve noticed that two recently opened, and similarly themed, boutiques in Arcata and Garberville, have adopted cryptic, three-letter names. DTA, in Arcata and SHC in Garberville, both sport black walls, graffiti art, and prominently displayed sound equipment. Both shops look more like nightclubs than clothing stores, but they have no cover charge, and serve no drinks.

 

Can these places really pay the rent, from a few bins of silk screened T-Shirts, a couple racks of hoodies and a display case full of CDs by local artists? Maybe these shops exist simply to launder drug money, in which case, a lot of inventory might just get in the way. But maybe they noticed that guys who walk right past clothing stores, will walk into any shop that has a pile of sound equipment in the window, and will, if possible, buy their clothes there, even if they only sell one T-Shirt.

 

As a guy who’s lived most of his life in music store T-shirts, I guess they’ve got me pegged. I’ve been in both shops, and I almost never go into clothing stores, which you can easily tell by looking at me. Still, these places baffle me. I like big pubic-address speakers as much as the next guy, but I never really got on the “hoodie” bandwagon.

I’ve never worn a hoodie. A baja, sure, hooded shirt, yeah, but I just can’t picture myself looking good in a hoodie. I got nothing against hoodies. A lot of people seem to feel comfortable in them, and look really natural in them. I just think I look slouchy and disheveled enough, at my best, and I don’t really see myself as “thug” material.

 

Speaking of material, cotton knit hoodies, don’t keep you warm when they get wet. Cotton gets soggy and heavy, and at least one person around here has died of hypothermia, in 50 degree weather, wearing a really cool-looking, but wet, hoodie. Here in the woods of SoHum, whenever it’s cold enough to need clothes, its also raining, so I live in fleece. The squirrels and blue jays wouldn’t make fun of me any less, if I looked like I had more “street-cred”.

 

Despite what the squirrels say, cryptic three-letter monikers are clearly very edgy and hip right now. Two, three-letter clothing boutiques in Humboldt County, looks like a trend to me, so deal me in. My new boutique will have even bigger speakers, and fewer clothes than either DTA or SHC, and it will have actual cutting edges built into the architecture, so unless you’re very careful, you’ll need stitches before you leave.

 

I’ve also decided to launch my own line of urban street-wear, featuring my own bold, cutting edge, three-letter designs to go with my new boutique. (cue heavy hip-hop beat) Boom Boom chicka chicka Boom Boom, Boom Boom chicka chicka Boom Boom, Boom Boom chicka chicka Boom Boom, Boom Boom chicka chicka Boom Boom.

Introducing:

Boom Boom chicka chicka Boom Boom, Boom Boom chicka chicka Boom Boom, Boom Boom chicka chicka Boom Boom, Boom Boom chicka chicka Boom Boom.

Boom Boom chicka chicka Boom Boom, Boom Boom chicka chicka Boom Boom, Boom Boom chicka chicka Boom Boom, Boom Boom chicka chicka Boom Boom.

Here at LSD we grind up culture and spit out style, that aggressive, sub-literate, mean-spirited style that’s so popular with young people these days. We created these unbelievably crass and wildly inappropriate designs to suit today’s unbelievably crass consumers and their wildly inappropriate lifestyles. Here’s a sample:

Boom Boom chicka chicka Boom Boom, Boom Boom chicka chicka Boom Boom, Boom Boom chicka chicka Boom Boom, Boom Boom chicka chicka Boom Boom.

 

Boom Boom chicka chicka Boom Boom, Boom Boom chicka chicka Boom Boom, Boom Boom chicka chicka Boom Boom, Boom Boom chicka chicka Boom Boom.

 

Boom Boom chicka chicka Boom Boom, Boom Boom chicka chicka Boom Boom, Boom Boom chicka chicka Boom Boom, Boom Boom chicka chicka Boom Boom.

 

Boom Boom chicka chicka Boom Boom, Boom Boom chicka chicka Boom Boom, Boom Boom chicka chicka Boom Boom, Boom Boom chicka chicka Boom Boom.

 

Boom Boom chicka chicka Boom Boom, Boom Boom chicka chicka Boom Boom, Boom Boom chicka chicka Boom Boom, Boom Boom chicka chicka Boom Boom.

Boom Boom chicka chicka Boom Boom, Boom Boom chicka chicka Boom Boom, Boom Boom chicka chicka Boom Boom, Boom Boom chicka chicka Boom Boom.

Boom Boom chicka chicka Boom Boom, Boom Boom chicka chicka Boom Boom, Boom Boom chicka chicka Boom Boom, Boom Boom chicka chicka Boom Boom.

Boom Boom chicka chicka Boom Boom, Boom Boom chicka chicka Boom Boom, Boom Boom chicka chicka Boom Boom, Boom Boom chicka chicka Boom Boom.

Boom Boom chicka chicka Boom Boom, Boom Boom chicka chicka Boom Boom, Boom Boom chicka chicka Boom Boom, Boom Boom chicka chicka Boom Boom.

Here at LSD, we’re cool with feminism, and we’re hip to equality, but we know that sexiness is power, and we want to help women harness theirs, with our bold new designs. We know that all women are sexy, and no matter how stupid you feel wearing these designs, they’ll still look great on you, because you always look great, no matter how stupid your clothes look. So, check out these hot new designs for women in tight, titty-huggging tanks, and scoop neck tees that bounce your way.

 Boom Boom chicka chicka Boom Boom, Boom Boom chicka chicka Boom Boom, Boom Boom chicka chicka Boom Boom, Boom Boom chicka chicka Boom Boom.

Boom Boom chicka chicka Boom Boom, Boom Boom chicka chicka Boom Boom, Boom Boom chicka chicka Boom Boom, Boom Boom chicka chicka Boom Boom.

 

Boom Boom chicka chicka Boom Boom, Boom Boom chicka chicka Boom Boom, Boom Boom chicka chicka Boom Boom, Boom Boom chicka chicka Boom Boom.

 

Boom Boom chicka chicka Boom Boom, Boom Boom chicka chicka Boom Boom, Boom Boom chicka chicka Boom Boom, Boom Boom chicka chicka Boom Boom.

 

Boom Boom chicka chicka Boom Boom, Boom Boom chicka chicka Boom Boom, Boom Boom chicka chicka Boom Boom, Boom Boom chicka chicka Boom Boom.

Boom Boom chicka chicka Boom Boom, Boom Boom chicka chicka Boom Boom, Boom Boom chicka chicka Boom Boom, Boom Boom chicka chicka Boom Boom.

Boom Boom chicka chicka Boom Boom, Boom Boom chicka chicka Boom Boom, Boom Boom chicka chicka Boom Boom, Boom Boom chicka chicka Boom Boom.

Boom Boom chicka chicka Boom Boom, Boom Boom chicka chicka Boom Boom, Boom Boom chicka chicka Boom Boom, Boom Boom chicka chicka Boom Boom.

You don’t have to wait for an LSD Industries boutique to open up in your town, you can get these hot, trendy new designs right now at http://www.zazzle.com/lygsbtd* Sure they’re expensive, but I’m worth it. Get your own LSD today!!