Red Lights and Marijuana

 

I love Blogger's email update function.  We strolled through the red light district last night.  Earlier, we noted that the B&B had given us some comlimentary marijuana.  I never expected that.  Today, we are off to Anne Frank House, among other things.

Opium, Cocaine, and LSD

During a seasonal lunch back in 2002, a colleague confessed to having taken opium, cocaine, and LSD. Just to remind you, this person is a librarian. Of course, I made such a confession about LSD in the past (here and here). I don't think it's a big deal, but I would draw the line at addictive stuff, like cocaine and opium, unless I were dying. On my deathbed, I want the full Aldous Huxley experience. I might even smoke a big fat cigar as I lay dying. Yeah, just imagine: me at age 110 (or so), lying on my bed in silk PJs. There would be a dog curled up on the bed with me. We'd be surrounded by young busty nurses in old school uniforms, stockings, and FM boots. I'd have some nice psychedelic music (maybe early Pink Floyd) playing. Mangoes, papayas, and pineapples would all be close by, plus wine and dark chocolate. Come to think of it, this is Hugh Hefner's life right now, except he has 8 blondes, which is not my thing. Maybe Hef is dying?

But, back to the story at hand. I find his/her confession to be extra weird because this person is very childlike. I can't imagine this individual drinking under age or sneaking into a restricted movie. S/he seems to be so law and order, so old, so straight and narrow. If I had to guess, this was the person who clapped the teacher's chalk brushes after school. It makes me wonder what other secrets people are carrying around with them. All of which reminds me of Post Secret, which I am sure you all know about. Heck, even I knew about it, but I often forget to visit it. I think I will go now.

Mad Men

To be a man in 1960 must have been something. To be a woman looks like it mostly sucked, 'cause it was a man's world back then. Men ruled the business world and the home. These were the days when men could slap their wives, tell them what to do, and keep an apartment in the city for extra-curricular entertainment. Women were essentially servants and mistresses, Well, in the world of the advertising executive, at any rate.

The chain smoking makes me feel asthmatic, or like I am once again a child with my mother smoking in every conceivable place at any time of the day. And then there's the alcohol. They drink and smoke all day - at home, at work, on the train, in the car. It looks like everyone was a chain-smoking alcoholic.

It makes me wonder what would happen if I set up a bar in my office. I'd just need a few bottles of booze, some crystal, and an ice bucket ... and a secretary. Damn, I forgot about that. I'd need her to wash the glasses and fetch the ice, so I am not sure if this would work, but I'd like to try. Would anyone say anything? Would my office become a party zone? I'll run an experiment and report back.

Mad Men has been praised for its historical veracity and its visual style. I concur. It's well-acted, engaging, and highly entertaining. It confirms for me that the business world is not the place for me. I prefer academia and the associated complete lack of supervision.

Then and Now

(Started 9:21 AM)

While strapping a helmet to my son's head, I reflected on my experience of learning how to skate. My mother tied a pair of used skates to my feet, pushed me out onto the ice, and sat in the heated area where she drank coffee and smoked. I had no instructors, no mentors, no guides -- aside from the speedy skaters flying past me on the expansive ice -- and no helmet.

Nor did I have a helmet when cycling or skateboarding. You'd have thought that children where expendable back then, especially considering that seat belts were rarely used, except for fun. Sometimes, my brother and I would buckle-up mostly for kicks and because it was a weird thing to do. That is even more interesting when I recall that my parents were not always sober when driving. I remember cruising down rural Ontario highways at 100 KM per hour after my parents had spent a night drinking with two other couples.

Six of them would pile into one car and hit the various booze houses. My brother and I stayed at a house with the children of these three unions, the eldest trying to exert some sort of control over chaos. At 2:00 or 3:00 AM, the parents would roll in and we divided into families: two families headed out into the darkness once again, and one family crawled upstairs to bed. After 45 minutes spent on the highways and side-streets, my dad would steer the huge Ford into the driveway and I would climb out, find my bed and sleep.

The most curious thing is that one of the drinkers in the sextet (there was no swinging, as far as I could determine) was a cop with the Ontario Provincial Police! But, this was back in the days when drinking and driving went together like ham and cheese. These were the days when kids could stand up on the front seat of the car to get a better view, or even crawl onto the back dash just to see if you could fit.

Oh, and there were no infant car seats. I think I was brought home from the hospital in a straw basket that my mother perched on her lap. Yup, kids were expendable and easily replaceable. I remember riding my tricycle and age three on the street in front of my house with no parents anywhere around. I knew enough to move aside when a car came. At age four, I walked to school by myself. The school was maybe half a mile away, but still. I sometimes wonder why I ever made it out of my childhood in one piece.

(Finished 9:25 AM)

I am Not a Pot Head

In fact, I haven't had a puff of marijuana in years, nor I have taken anything other than the occasional glass of wine.

But, I just have to say something about a letter to the editor in yesterday's Toronto Star. Jeanette Wiltshire describes marijuana as a gateway drug that causes "an addiction that ultimately spirals into other potent drugs." This is bogus, dude.

I am sure that some people find that marijuana is addictive, like cigarettes or booze. It's probably bad for your lungs too. But, I wish people would drop the garbage about this being some sort of gateway drug. I know lots of professionals, from lawyers, to doctors, to crown attorneys, to professors who have indulged in pot and have never had the need or desire to smoke crack.

Why isn't alcohol labeled a gateway drug? Because it is legal and billions of dollars in profits and tax money are raked in every year. I drink wine and am not addicted to alcohol and have never felt the need to snort coke. I have smoked marijuana and have never been addicted to it and have never felt the need to shoot heroine. In other words, just because something might be addictive to some people doesn't make it a gateway drug.

Addendum: And, besides, how do we know that the gateway drug is not alcohol? Alcohol is generally the first drug that members of our society use, so it would follow that if one takes any other drug, then alcohol (legal and freely-available) should get the blame as having been the gateway drug.

LSD (or, Confession #5)

Albert Hofmann, the Swiss dude who discovered LSD in 1938, died on April 29 at the age of 102. One of my goals in life is to live past the 100 year mark. It just makes sense to me. If this guy, Bob Hope, and George Burns can do, so can I. Of course, I'd like to live forever, but that invention is a long way off.

I could tell you lots about the studies and experiments with lysergic acid diethylamide in the quest for curing schizophrenia and other psychiatric disorders or the experiments conducted by the CIA and other intelligence agencies during the Cold War, but that you can easily find on the web. Instead, I will tell you two other stories.

The first is about Father Acid, a tall Rolling Stones fan who lived in my residence during my undergrad. He always had copious amounts of all kinds of drugs at hand, and he liked to trip on acid. Oddly, I did not take any kind of recreational drug during the first two years of my undergrad. I stayed with alcohol, a depressive, psychoactive drug that is probably more dangerous that several of the illegal drugs, but society has deemed it to be acceptable. But, back to Father Acid.

One day, he decided to leave his residence room and live in a tipi (or tepee, teepee) with two other dudes in a park by the river in winter. I wondered how he would survive without electricity to run his stereo system, but that did not seem to concern him. The funny part of the story is that the conservation authority eventually found them and pinned a note to the tipi to alert the squatters that there were living on government land and that they had to move.

Shortly thereafter, he was arrested while in possession of 1000 hits of acid and numerous other drugs, like barbiturates and amphetamines. I remember that he cut his hair prior to his trial, but I have no idea what happened to him after that.

I am running out of time, so part two will have to come tomorrow. I will leave you with a tip: don't buy LSD on the streets as much of it is laced with rat poison.

part 2

Dreaming of Drugs & Getting Stuff Done

Imagine drug dealers showing up with a dump truck filled with pot. I guess they overestimated the demand, and were quite put out when their buyer only wanted two or three ounces, and not several garbage bags of the stuff. There they were, two dudes in overalls shoveling weed into large bags, like it was cattle manure.

No one could have missed the huge truck stopped in the middle of the street, with these guys offering to sell Mary Jane to anyone passing by. I watched the guys do their business and then noticed a cop heading towards me. I took off and found myself in an appliance store (probably Sears) where I nonchalantly began appraising and comparing refrigerators and stoves.

Mr. Cop started to harass me and grabbed my arm tightly. I protested that watching a drug deal is a sociological event - something anyone would watch - especially given the scope of the operation. I didn't purchase any, never spoke to anyone, and only fled because I felt I had been mistaken for a buyer or seller. This cop had it out for me, and clearly wanted to take me downtown to book me on something or other. The dream ended there.

Clearly, I think the possession and sale of smallish amounts of marijuana should be decriminalized. One ought to be able to cultivate it for one's own use. Forget the wasted time and effort prosecuting small time users. That is crazy.

Work

It's Friday and I have finally finished preparing for my presentation next Tuesday. Next week is conference craziness. I have one conference on Monday and Tuesday, and another Wednesday to Friday evening.

I have almost finished a short opinion article with a co-worker. Hopefully, that will go out soon, and then a co-worker and I have to start preparation for a major presentation for a conference taking place in a few months.

I'll be mostly away next week, so updates may not happen for a few days. Have a nice week. Don't do anything I wouldn't do. Catch you on the flip side.

Technorati Tags: dreams, drugs, work

Rural Childhood, or Death by Automobile

I always chuckle when I remember a friend's recollection that half of his kindergarten class ended up in jail, not as kids, mind you, but later, when they had reached jailing age. It's quite a statistic.

My favourite story is the one in which a certain twin (I am not sure what the other twin was up to that day) tried to rob a convenience store with a garden rake. He had a difficult time even with the rake, for he had lost both thumbs in a motorcycle accident, and had a difficult time wielding the rake without opposable digits. I think the police managed to subdue him quickly and efficiently, before he was able to injure anyone.

That this guy was arrested has always pleased me, for my most enduring memory of him was that he fell in front of me during a cross-country skiing race in grade 8 and used his ski poles to try and trip me. That will never happen again, mostly because I haven't gone skiing recently, but I think a lack of thumbs might make skiing problematic.

One of my recollections of youth in a small town is friends and acquaintances lost in automobile accidents. I have a big list, starting with a major crash between our small town and the next. I think that three of five of the the passengers died in that crash, which was fueled by high speed and drugs. It ended in the destruction of the car and a tree. Seat belts were not really enforced back then.

Over the years, I lost a few more friends, like Callan and Philip and Leon, but these were, I think, sober accidents, the kind that might happen on open rural highways with fast cars. I am not sure if these stats are the result of lax drinking and driving laws at the time, or from excessive speed on rural roads, or from the fact that a driver's license was a requirement of life in rural areas. We needed licenses to get out of town or to transport ourselves to parties where we could drink and try to pick up chicks. Of course, I did not drink and drive, but I did accept rides from those who had too much to drink. That was a bad scene, and I am happy that I made it out alive.

Comment moderation remains on: to see why, read these posts: one, two, three, four.

Technorati Tags: youth, drinking, driving, death

Random Things

First, the recent deaths of four RCMP officers has stirred up the marijuana debate even more. I have said this before, but I will say it again. We shouldn't be making criminals out of tokers. We shouldn't ban a substance that is probably less harmful than alcohol. Prohibition didn't work then and it isn't working now.

Start Counting

I've added a counter to this blog, almost two years later. Hey, and at the time of posting, I had 33 visitors in the first 24 hours (and that doesn't include me). That's cool, although no one left a comment :-( which leads to my next point.

Comment Killer

Now I know the meaning of the term. It seems that my recent three-part segment from my journal scared some folks away. Maybe I'll think twice before I divulge anything so deeply personal again.

Dan Rather

I have kinda always liked Dan, but I have to say that I may have to re-evaluate that after having read this list of Dan Ratherisms. They are more apt than anything uttered by Dan Quail, but they are rather goofy. It's hard to pick a favourite, but how about: "This election swings like one of those pendulum things." or, "This race is tight like a too-small bathing suit on a too-long ride home from the beach." Say what? The list is hilarious.

Technorati tags: marijuana, blog statistics, Dan Rather