Recent Blog Posts



All Recent Posts

The yellow lines on the ground are lined or have bumps to tell...



The yellow lines on the ground are lined or have bumps to tell you where you are in the subway station. I think they’re for the blind. When I’m sleepy, I close my eyes and walk on the yellow part for a mini nap. What could possibly go wrong?

About 

Hi, I'm Stacy. I'm from Portland, Oregon, USA, and am currently living in Busan, South Korea. Check me out on: Tumblr, Twitter, Instagram, Lastfm, and Flickr.

 

Toast story, Hadan

Yes, I am reviewing a toast place. Why? Because unlike your local Issac Toast, this place brands cute animal faces into your toast. Yes it does.

Unfortunately, despite its cutsiness and convienient florist I wouldn't recommend toast story for a first date. Why? Because as soon as you bite into one of these sandwiches, the sauce has got to go somewhere - and that somewhere is going to be your lap, your date's lap, or (if you're lucky) all over your face.


Location: At the bottom of the hill in front of Dong-A university, by the bookstore, near the subway station.
Prices
Toast: 1,000-3,000 won
Juice smoothies: 1,500
Coffee: 3,500
English menu: No. Staff speak a little English.
Vegetarian options: Yes, if you can bear to eat the cute little faces.

My Korean Newspaper

It’s what I’ve always wanted – more North Korean propaganda. From Martyn Williams site:

North Korea’s Naenara website is back. The site went offline around early September when the dot-kp domain name space went down.

Naenara is run by Pyongyang’s Korea Computer Center and offers news, photos, shopping, tourism information and MP3 files from North Korea.

It’s running inside North Korea’s recently-activated domestic IP address space, but isn’t working perfectly. Some of the links point to dot-kp addresses, which are still not working. It’s worth keeping an eye on.

You can find it at http://175.45.176.14/en/

One quote from an article reporting on the Dear Leader’s toast to an opera troupe (back to his old stomping grounds):

Expressing his satisfaction over the fact that the opera troupe, in cooperation with China, completed another opera this year which marks the 60th anniversary of the entry of the Chinese People’s Volunteers into the Korean war, he stressed that it is an invariable will of the Party and people of Korea to further consolidate and promote the friendly relations between the two countries.

I get it already! Juche sasang, out; Songun, in. Or, is it more like the U.S. Army slogan, “Mission First, People Always!”

Powered by ScribeFire.


Filed under: East Asia, Korea Tagged: dprk, juche sasang, kim jong il, naenara, north korea, songun

  It was

  It was like a building that held The Blues, the synchronized groaning of agonized souls, set to a cadence beat out on the hollow desk-tops of inner-city schools across the country: Palm-palm-pencil! Palm-palm-pencil! “Boom-boom-clack! Boom-boom-clack!”

From the mouths of every student, stories of mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers, aunties and uncles murdered, dead or in prison. The stories varied, getting better, more spectacular, as they encouraged each other along in their telling, acting out, writing, rewriting, and rewriting, animating, adding detail, retelling, re-acting out, etc… I wish I could print those stories exactly how the students wrote them, themselves. But they were tossed in the trash, with everything else in my classroom, upon order of the school principal. I still have the memories though. Here are a few stories:

Zade was a young beauty, with skin of deep dark chocolate, the soulful eyes of a cow, (as they say of such eyes in India), big and round and lashed. She was brilliant: socially, emotionally, and academically. She had character and courage, dignity and grace. She wrote that she’d found her auntie dead from gun shots, after coming out of a closet that she’d hidden in for god knows how many days. Although I don’t believe it myself, Zade was convinced that her auntie had taken the bullets in her stead. The gunman, Zade said, did not want to kill her auntie but wanted to kill Zade, for revenge against something concerning her mother.

There was Skittles, so called because of his “Skittles Dance,” where he’d raise his hands above his head as if it were raining, and spin around, “It’s raining Skittles!” Years later I found out from other students that the word skittles is a reference to pharmaceuticals.

Skittles had watched his dad get gunned down less than a foot away. The shooter had driven right up behind him, point blank, back of the head, as he was fixing a tire, as Skittles stood with tire in hand. And now Skittles was losing an eye, to a retinal scratch that his mother had neglected to care for. The infection in his eye caused a rheumatic swelling in his body, so that sometimes he’d massage his hands and elbows, or hold his head in his hands and moan and moan, talking to himself about his life, asking God why life was so hard.

It took me months to find a line to social services that worked. Once I did actually contact them, they did as best they could, which was not a whole lot, no fault of their own, or anyone else, except the generations of junkies having children, generations of abused becoming abusers. Since leaving Detroit, I’ve talked to a married coworker that was fucking Skittle’s mom. When I asked about Skittles, he said Skittles has one glass eye now.

Genius was one of my favorites. He was a clever little kid that somehow managed to never get in any trouble. He was nerdy, with thick glasses, a huge beaming smile and dimpled chipmunk cheeks. He wrote a story about setting his mom’s house on fire with her crack torch when he was four. He said that the firemen had sent in a big dog to save him, but he was scared of the dog. As he’d tell the story, grinning, getting into the narration, he’d run around his desk, pretending it was the fire, and he was trying to escape from the jaws of a German Shepherd. The students loved this story, as they loved every story from their peers. It seemed like personal story-telling was one of the few activities that brought the kids together.

The neglect that these kids suffered, created inside their hearts an insatiable thirst for immediate recognition; a thirst that I believe no amount of recognition will ever quench. Kids that damaged by 3rd grade are damaged for life, what is left of it, before they end up dead themselves. If they survive, chances are that they won’t ever come to achieve any real sense of inner-satisfaction in life. Because trust, like other types of learning, I think has a window. It’s an early window. It starts in the womb, and lasts until about two. If a kid isn’t saved from the wreck before two, forget about it he’s done.

The kids acted how they knew how to act. They knew that sometimes when they were bad, they received encouragement, because their parents clapped and laughed, and affectionately labeled them bad. They also knew that at other times, when they were bad, they were called all kinds of loathsome names, threatened and dealt with through physical pain, emotional pain, psychological pain. But, whichever way they looked at it, they knew that acting bad got them attention, usually from an adult, usually from a teacher. Teacher’s can’t use pain on their students, especially this teacher. The idea of cruelty towards a student, what kind of idea is that? I was usually too busy crying, pleading for them to demonstrate some recognition of kindness, to think of how to be cruel to them. But niceness was something they dared not trust. It would’ve been dangerous, stupid, for them to let their guards down.

So, for the most part they were all bad, all the time, reveling in it, spinning around the classroom, like it was a mosh pit, mashing to the cadence of “boom-boom-clack,” pounded out on the desks. I’d come into the class during lunch, and my students would be dirty-dancing, necking and fondling each other on top of the desks, shooting craps in the corner, buying and selling candy – Skittles, and Extra-Spicy Cheetos, while their free lunch PB and J’s were smeared across the walls like shit.

And there were turds smeared across the walls. The boys restroom had neither working urinal nor toilet, because both had been ripped out of the plaster walls. But they were still used, the toilet covered in dried turds and the urinal brimming with old piss. Over time, the floors began to look like a Chinese toilet. Students would enter the restroom and find a place to squat. How they wiped I will never know, because there was never any toilet paper.

I never learned to shoot craps, but I saw a lot of it while I was in Detroit. For instance there was a guy on the school board, a guy with Gucci sun-glasses, an ivory chain, snake-skin boots and a mauve silk ensemble that he liked to wear with several gold crosses and a fist full of rings. He shot craps in C’s office whenever he came for school board meetings.

C ran a craps table out of his mom’s basement, and I went to it one night with Mr. Right. It was the mosh-pit again, a bunch of mean looking men, old gang members, knocking each other around and snatching money off a piece of cardboard, in a muddy yard full of rusted-out Chrysler carcasses. Mr. Right, being mathematically inclined, took these stupid old men’s money, about 800 bucks. Then we went and spent it all at a strip-club on Eight-Mile.

 I knew these guys were all gang members because they told me so. C told me he was Nation of Islam, said he was Fruit of Islam, a two-percenter. He asked me what my heritage was, and I gave him the wrong answer. I said my grandmother was Jewish, but also that I knew nothing about Judaism. This didn’t sit well with C. He looked at me like I was growing fish scales for skin. He told me that the Jews speak in secret tongues, and talk to demons. After that I stopped mentioning my Jewish heritage, but from then on he liked to refer to me as, “The Jew,” and tell me stories about greedy kikes, hiding money, like Leprechauns. I told him I wished I knew where that leprechaun was. He said I was right in front of him.

There were a lot of Nation of Islam parents at this school. And board members, and other workers were also Nation of Islam. There was a martial arts teacher known as Brother Ali. He wore a black and red, silk martial arts outfit. He taught kids how to tear out eyeballs, and other balls. He had two kids from my class, in his martial arts class. One was a girl I’ll call Envy, because she was probably the most insecure and jealous person in my class, which is saying a lot because jealousy over attention was a huge issue for most of the kids. She would come to class and brag to me how Brother Ali had taught her to kill anyone, of any size, and especially white people. I didn’t respond to this, but mentioned it to some other white teachers, who told me Ali was a creep and forget about it, which I did. 

But then, Envy did not not forget. She did not like the boy who was in her martial arts class, Genius. Envy hated Genius for what he was, incredibly smart, (as was she). But he had thick glasses, so she called him an ugly nerd, an Erkel, and an Oreo.

Here’s where I did something that no male teacher in the United States should ever do – I told Envy that Genius a “cutie-pie.”

Envy told Ali what I’d called Genius. Ali came to me and accused me of being a pedophile. It was difficult for me not to stomp him right then and there, and I wondered if I could nail him in a knee cap before he could nail me in mine. But, I told him we should talk together with the principle, and Genius’s grandparents.

After school, Ali came to my class and told me to come to the principle’s office, which I did. In her office, with the door closed, I met Ali, the principle, and an old man claiming to be Genius’s grandfather. I talked to the, “grandfather,” telling him how smart his grandson was, and that I didn’t mean any harm calling him cute. But Ali would not have it. He continued calling me a pedophile, until I finally asked him to come outside to settle it. Then, the principle told us both to calm down, and gave me permission to leave.

 A few weeks later, I met Genius’s grandma and asked her how her husband was, Genius’s grandfather. She told me Genius’s grandfather was dead, and had been for five years. I told her I’d met one of Genius’s grandfathers, and she said they were both dead. This is when I should have realized how powerless I was at this school, how the slightest accusation could bring about the death of my reputation, leave me with limited means of gainful employment in academia.

But I’m stupid, in all the wrong ways. My vanity, my stupid, stubborn desire to achieve something in this classroom full of angry kids, would not allow me to resign. I remained another few months after this situation, and in the end Brother Ali and Genius had nothing at all to do with my resignation.


Filed under: American Economy, Asia America, detroit, gonzo journalism, kwame kilpatrick, teaching in america, Travel Vignettes and Advice, travel writing, walt kowalski

scott morley

Life in Korea: Halloween



Author's note: A early version of this article appears in the October 2010 issue of the Groove Magazine. This version should be considered more complete and up-to-date due to the early print deadline.

Like a number of places across the world, Halloween is a great way to escape the bonds of your usual personality and become someone (or something) else, if only for a night. If you've looked at the calendar, you already know Halloween falls on a Sunday - meaning that a number of people will be dressing up for all the fun on Saturday.

It's worth noting that the younger generation of Koreans gets into the Halloween spirit as well. Just because it's not a Korean holiday doesn't mean they can't embrace the silliness and costumes the holiday entails. In fact, don't be surprised if some of their costumes are better or more elaborate than yours.

Get ready

Both Namdaemun (Hoehyeon station, line 4) and Dongdaemun (Dongdaemun station, line 1 or 4) are excellent places to assemble your Halloween costume. You'll find some masks and accessories, although you'll have to bring your creativity to bear.

Just like in your home country, there's plenty of places selling stuff for your Neytiri outfit or that timeless gothic look. You'll still have to put the pieces together on your own. Myeongdong is fine for accessories or plenty of local stuff, while department stores will offer a seasonal selection of costumes and foam stuff. Most of it is geared towards kids, but there are a few costumes-in-a-bag waiting for you bigger kids.

Get out and party!

You don't need a laundry list of all the places holding Halloween events. It's easier to head down to your personal preference of Hongdae or Itaewon (two neighborhoods in Seoul well-known for their parties) and check out the posters that get put up the week before.

There's bound to be plenty of good costume parties and drink specials, although walking around and seeing all the costumes is half the fun. If interested in checking out some new bands, the always excellent Battle of the Bands starts at Stompers on October 30th. If you just want some punk, Club Spot will have ...Whatever That Means, Kickscotch, and Rux on the 30th as well - plenty of punk to go around on a Saturday night.

All the major theme parks had their Halloween-themed events up in late September, but they're meant more for kids and families. You can still go and have a fun time, but it won't exactly be the hotbed of social activity.

I'll throw out a special mention of Gangnam - you probably won't see as many costume-wearers there, but hey, you're unique. Expect the clubs in Gangnam to throw a party or two - but don't expect a break from their usually high cover charges.

One more photo to get you in the Halloween spirit:

Creative Commons License © Chris Backe - 2010

This post was originally published on my blog,Chris in South Korea. If you are reading this on another website and there is no linkback or credit given, you are reading an UNAUTHORIZED FEED.


 

Quinn Martin's Epilogue

This is the final part of Can of Bliss, published in four parts here at Live Journal, and published in print form in Culturebook Book Two

IN CONCLUSION,

I would never deny the love I felt for a woman because society or some law said that she and the rest of her ethnicity was evil or inferior to me. Nor would I deny love for a plant that has alleviated so much suffering, proven so useful and caused so much JOY for so many people for so many years. Even if I didn’t smoke weed…Even if I HATED the marijuana high and thought reggae music was stupid and repetitive, why should others not be able to enjoy the soothing medicinal effects of MJ, or the delicious, intoxicating brownies and cookies baked with it, just because I happen to have another point of view? 

 

Exactly! Who am I? Who is anybody to deny somebody they don’t even know anything? Fuck people! God’s law above man’s law! 

 

ALL CRIMINALS IN JAIL FOR POSSESSION OF MARIJUANA IN AMERICA SHOULD BE PARDONED AND RELEASED NOW! 

 

Problem is, there will be no jobs for them, and there are not enough psychiatric facilities to deal with all the victims of trauma. 

 

-- Victims of trauma? 

    -- Yeah, all the young inmates that have been brutally raped and beaten for the past few years while they been serving time. 

-- What was their crime?

    -- They enjoyed listening to Pink Floyd and getting stoned. They had long hair and looked like pot smokers.

-- How did they get caught?

    -- They were driving home and got pulled over. Something about a busted tail light. They got searched. Officer found a bag of grass and they were put in jail. They are now serving time for possession in a vehicle. Sure, if they knew their rights or had money, they could’ve gotten off with a fine or probation, but they didn’t know much about the law. They were poor and uneducated.

-- You’re right, they are victims. America sure has some fucked up laws.

    -- And because America is so powerful globally, the US coerces other countries to enforce anti-cannabis legislation, so that THEY can not benefit from that agricultural product economically, which in a free trade laissez-faire society, these countries would/should be allowed to do.

-- How do you know that?

    -- I lived in Asia for 13 years and 5 months. That’s how I know. SKorea and the Philippines have been in the pocket of the US ever since WE saved them from the Japanese in the early 1940’s, in effect, saving US from the Great Depression by giving US the world’s biggest and most profitable business – war machines, and employees of the war machine – The Pentagon, created in 1947 being the headquarters, main offices of the War Machine. 

 

SKorea was the first real exercise of the new war machine, successfully dividing Korea into North and South and letting Mao assume control of Kim, Ilsung in the North, while WE supported Syngman Rhee or Lee or EEE in the South. WE did the same thing in Viet Nam, giving the North to Mao, while WE installed Ngo in the South. The South kicked Ngo out of office, cuz he was a bad man. That’s when the war began; to fuel the US economy…  

 

Do you think if ALL soldiers stationed overseas, all the men and women in Iraq and Afghanistan, and all the Americans working on US bases overseas – in Germany, Okinawa, SKorea, Elsewhere – If they were all to return home to the US, do you think they would have trouble FINDING JOBS?


Can of Bliss Part Three

In terms of plant survival, getting back to my original point – it begs the question…Like any species of living thing, plants seek to survive and have its progeny survive. 

 

Success is relative. The more relatives you have, the more successful you are.

 

It would behoove a plant species to link itself with humans, since humans are by far the dominant species on this planet; and as a result, have humans take the time and effort to insure its survival. 

 

THC, the active drug in cannabis, is classified as a mild hallucinogenic, the same class of drug as LSD or psilocybin: the active drug in mushrooms. THC is not nearly as strong as other hallucinogenic drugs, but it’s the same general high. Music sounds better, colors are deeper, everything seems funny; hunky dory. Food is far tastier.

 

Today, marijuana plants are pampered like no other life form on this planet. Video cameras are placed in grow rooms so growers can observe plants without interfering with them, the way concerned mothers place baby monitors into cribs so they can monitor their babies while they sleep. The cameras, the monitors, the 24-7 attention – they are for protection of the species. Marijuana is cultivated all over the world and the growers treat their plants like children; like royalty, bred for specificity of traits.

 

One might ask – does marijuana have a consciousness? Does pot know how much it is prized by the human race, the most dominant species on the planet? Does cannabis know that while most agricultural products are sold by the pound or bushel, its buds are sold by the gram? Did hemp plan this? Definitely, evolution played a big role; that is, the creation of the THC chemical alkaloid has ensured the survival of the marijuana plant. 

 

It begs the question – did pot plan this? Does marijuana, or any plant for that matter, have a consciousness? If a plant has a consciousness, is it a collective consciousness? If so, does this collective consciousness or unconsciousness extend beyond a plant’s own species? Do plants species compete with one another for life? Can plants communicate without words and taunt each other? “Who’s getting the sunlight now, bitch!?!” 

 

Did marijuana hundreds of thousands or millions of years ago evolve whereby one of its chemical components would have a direct effect on the human brain? This effect, forever bonding the plant with humans, causing the most dominant species on earth to dumb itself down to a primal state – I want food now! Ha! Ha! Ha! That feels so good! – Did hemp’s flavoricious (sic) wiles intentially cause easily addicted humans to grow more of this plant, becoming dependent on this plant, forever insuring the plant’s survival?

 

It wasn’t until 1988 – that would be roughly six thousand years after humans first began smoking cannabis that humans first fully understood, scientifically, how and why marijuana affects humans the way it does. Researchers found that the human brain has receptors that accept this chemical THC found naturally in cannabis. And these receptors allow THC to affect three parts of the brain – appetite, pain, and memory. 

 

Let’s look at these three areas individually. Appetite – Smoking pot will make you hungry, even if you are full, even if you have NO appetite. For this reason THC is useful in treating serious or just practicing anorexic/bulimic men, women and teenagers. This sudden craving for food is called ‘the munchies’ to stoners. Pot smokers are called ‘stoners’ cuz they get stoned

 

This hunger impulse is the reason why pot is so popular on Thanksgiving Day, cuz after gorging yourself with turkey and mashed potatoes and gravy and having to undo your belt buckle, there’s no way to REALLY enjoy pumpkin pie and ice cream without getting stoned first. Unless you wait till your hunger naturally recedes. You could always force yourself to vomit and then eat the pie.

 

Pain – Pot also affects the pain center of the brain, alleviating discomfort in most respects to some degree. The effect of marijuana allows the smoker to be in a content state, whereby it is much easier to forget about and cope with an aching back or ovaries, or an upset stomach, or the headaches and tension caused by chemotherapy or dialysis that those afflicted with the absence of working kidneys, like my older brother and Different Strokes’ star Gary Coleman suffer from. Whatchu talking ‘bout Willis?

 

My older brother lost both his kidneys almost 20 years ago. He was first hospitalized the day the US invaded Iraq in January 1991. We watched the footage of Bush Sr. and General Swartzkopf from my brother’s hospital room. As a result of this affliction, my brother goes to dialysis three times a week for three hours each visit and has done that for almost two decades. And there is no end until he gets a kidney transplant, and that ‘new kidney’ might not even survive in his body; in which case, it’s back to dialysis three times a week. He actually received a kidney transplant in 1996, which died on him. Kidney patients take a lot of medication and his med bills were so high, he began lessening his dose cuz he couldn’t afford the full dose. His transplant kidney died as a result. Whose fault is financial inadequacy when medicine is concerned? Is that Commie talk? Sounds like Commie talk.

 

When my brother returns home from the clinic three times a week, his body is completely devastated. He tells me that most of the 20-something age patients in his clinic smoke marijuana so they can eat and relax each evening after dialysis. US law, as it is written, as it has been written for the last seventy years, would criminalize these sick Americans, most of whom are working people with families, people who vote, people who have no criminal record – they are sick people who need relief. 

 

California, via the Compassionate Use Act of 1996, and subsequent legislation in 2003, allows medical marijuana use, by prescription only. My brother is the perfect candidate for medical marijuana.  My brother will NOT get a card because he believes that, at any time, a serious backlash could ensue – this is America; it’s happened before – and because my brother is an elementary school teacher, perhaps if it becomes public record that he ‘smokes pot after dialysis,’ it may cost him his job in the future, the way many Americans who attended Socialist meetings and rallies during the Great Depression, lost their jobs and were blacklisted in the decades that followed. Many hard-working Americans, who out of curiosity and starvation, attended a Socialist meeting in the 1930s had their lives destroyed by branches of the US government. People named names, to keep their jobs. 

 

In some states, Americans without working kidneys who want nothing more than the ability to pee again – they could be imprisoned for possessing cannabis or smoking cannabis just so they can have an appetite. As of February 2010, only 13 states out of 50 allow medical use of marijuana. The other 37 states punish marijuana users. Many states, like Texas, can jail small possessors for up to 180 days. USMARIJUANALAWSdotCOM has all the current laws at the touch of a button.

 

In California, the prices of Medical Marijuana are what the peak prices were during Reagan’s war on drugs by the end of the 80’s. By 1989, 1/8 ounce of premium marijuana had gone from 25 dollars in 1984 to 60 dollars by the end of the 80’s; while a gram of premium cocaine dropped from 120 dollars a gram in 1984 to 50 dollars a gram by 1989 – In 5 short years that change took place; and that FOREVER CHANGED DRUG CULTURE IN AMERICA.

 

Weed, a relatively safe product sold cheaply, was purchased regularly by customers once or twice a week. CRACK was purchased again and again the same day! When you run out, it’s time to run out and get more. Crack caused people to lose their jobs, rob their friends and families. It controlled people’s lives. The evil CRACK replaced safe, from the earth, sweet Mary Jane.

 

Weed, which had been smoked freely and given away and not really thought about much, became this controlled prized substance, doled out more scarcely, while cocaine use flourished and CRACK smoking suddenly became the sport of choice for athletes not into locker room culture. 

That was the result of Regan’s War on Drugs. Don’t believe me? 

 

In 1984, Mexican dealers sold marijuana on LA streets in Swaz – Hoover, Pico, Berendo, right behind Loyola High School, Fedora – the entire mid Wilshire district; and certain streets in Hollywood, Palms, and Venice Beach. Even Santa Monica Beach, station 17 was known as the play to cop. 5, 10 dollar bags, half ounces for 30 dollars – it was always a very mellow scene. Police looked the other way, unless you were stupid, or dangerous.

 

By 1989, all that could be procured on once safe street corners was CRACK! Sold on the same streets as we used to buy mexi-weed was Crack Cocaine – marijuana could no longer be found; and when it was found, it was expensive! This was the direct result of Reagan’s War on Drugs. How do I know this? I know it, cuz I lived it. There are no ideologies here, merely observations. Manuel Noriega was on the CIA payroll from about 1968 to the mid-1980s, till we invaded Panama in 1989.  Columbia-Panama-California; it’s pretty well-documented.  Those tax dollars also funded Death Squads in Central America.  And Oliver North gets a radio-show.  How Perfect!

 

In 2010, marijuana growers are being incarcerated and prices per pound are over $3000 per. At the same time, growers with ‘cards’ allowing them to grow are making boatloads of cash, while others doing the same thing are being incarcerated. That’s some fucked up shit. It’s giving commercial pot growers a really bad name. If an American wants to grow hemp for his own use, he can be imprisioned or fined, and his plants will be destroyed. US tax dollars are/have been for 30 years, funding these drug enforcement agencies.

 

The licensed growers don’t want marijuana to be legal, because then the price of pot would drop from thousands of dollars per pound to only hundreds of dollars per pound, or less. If pot were legal, the price would be 5 dollars a gram and that would benefit everybody, except growers and criminal enterprises. Medicare is not covering the cost of marijuana for all its medical users and sufferers are paying way too much money for pot. Everybody is. 

 

Getting back, in 1988, when researchers first discovered the effects of marijuana on the human brain and pinpointed exactly how THC affects the human brain – that only led to further research. 

 

Pot affects the memory. Aphasia, a side effect of smoking cannabis, means temporary loss of memory, or complete loss of an episode or short period of time. Most people would agree that stoners tend to be forgetful, as if to say – smoking pot has serious affects on memory retention. One reason the human brain’s receptors allow THC to effect memory is that the brain already produces its own chemical, similar to THC, which blocks memories.

 Why, you might ask, would the human brain have receptors for forgetting?  People concern themselves with memory, trying to remember names, learning, etc. As important as it is for humans to remember things, it is also equally as important for humans to forget things.

 

Imagine remembering every face you saw everyday, every smell, every event, every stubbed toe, everyday. That would drive any person locoLoco is the Mexican word for crazy. The human brain is equipped with its own self-producing chemicals to induce forgetting. In the same way morphine will deaden the sense of pain in someone’s broken leg, and sometimes endorphins can create the same effect; naturally occurring THC like chemicals in the brain deaden memories completely – as if, in the mind of the person, the events never took place. 

Victims of sexual abuse as children, both boys and girls, completely repress certain painful memories, like being anally penetrated by an older relative: a foster brother or uncle or neighbor. More often than not, that repression is NOT a conscious choice. Selective forgetting is the brain’s way of protecting the organism, sending this THC like chemical to memory centers in the brain to BLOCK that memory. 

 

Forgetting is a very natural process for any survival mechanism, like the brain using hunger to tell the body to eat, or the brain using pain to tell someone not to walk. The brain produces its own alkaloid to block memories, an alkaloid very similar to THC. 

 

In this cruel unforgiving world, many humans suffer the unthinkable – soldiers at war witnessing horrific deaths and carnage, their legless buddies dying in their arms, the smell of a roomful of blood; women, men even children being raped; homosexuals and other different peoples being brutally beaten with baseball bats – I’m sure Reginald Denny would love nothing more than to just ‘completely forget’ that he ever got dragged from his truck and beaten within an inch of his life by angry African Americans during the LA riots in 1992. Researchers are close to finding a drug, based on marijuana research, that can basically get rid of bad memories and help finally CURE humans with post-traumatic stress disorder and other debilitating mental illness caused by a bad memory or memories. 

 

Imagine a drug that can just wipe out a memory, like that penlight in the film, Men in Black. Think of all the post-traumatic stress disorder cases that could be cured. Marijuana is teaching mankind how to remedy its afflictions. Because of marijuana, cannabis, hemp, THC – researchers at Stanford are/were on a quest to perfect that drug/treatment/pill memory eraser. I think it was Stanford. Most of this and other interesting info is laid out in the documentary film, Botany of Desire, which is based on the book of the same name by Michael Pollan.

Presently, many California legislators wish to end this ground-breaking research on the ideology that, ‘Marijuana is harmful to individuals, and to society.’ So this research is currently on hiatus.

 

It’s for the good of society. I see that. Beliefs, ideologies, people’s feelings about what other people do – people they don’t even know; those mental constructs mean a lot more than peoples’ actual suffering, or never ending hope to live a fulfilling life. I’m being ironic

 

The Greatest Hope to Humankind’s Happiness! Leery was speaking of hallucinogenics; and LSD is the Drug in Sex, Drugs, Rock n Roll.

 

It is sometimes difficult for people see the forest for the trees. Jared Diamond in his book Guns, Germs and Steel tells an anecdote about natives of Papua, New Guinea seeing a Marlboro Man ad in a magazine – the image of the healthy rancher outdoors, taming horses, enjoying a Marlboro – the natives thought it was an anti-smoking ad. To their island mentality, the strongest message sent was, ‘If you smoke cigarettes, you couldn’t possibly do this!’ 

 

Jerry Seinfeld has a comedy bit – ‘What would happen if aliens came to earth and saw the way humans treat their dogs, following them around, picking up their feces – they’d probably think the dog was in charge!’ 

 

Life is very much about point of view.  Do psychedelic drugs cause humans to see all humans as brothers and sisters as opposed to a rival, an enemy based on their differences? Is a Jew a human being or some lesser race based on their devious nature, to quote millions and millions of people worldwide? 

 

Are marijuana smokers criminals that should be incarcerated alongside murderers and rapists? I wonder how many white suburban college students are serving time in jail for possession of marijuana. The number is higher than you think.

 

The FBI has released its annual report on Crime in the United States 2007. Once again, the number of people in the United States arrested for marijuana has gone up. 872,721 Americans were arrested for marijuana in 2007, and of those arrests, 89% or 775,138 were arrests for simple possession – not buying, selling, trafficking, or manufacture (growing). Furthermore, 3 out of 4 were under age 30; one in four were 18 years old or younger.

 

Now, a marijuana smoker is arrested at the rate of 1 every 37 seconds and almost 100 marijuana arrests per hour. Nearly one in eight drug prisoners in America are behind bars for marijuana-related offenses, according to data released this week by the US Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS). The FBI's tally is the highest marijuana arrest total ever-reported in law enforcement history. If this pace continues, annual arrests for pot will surpass one million per year by 2010.

 

Nearly 40,000 Americans are presently incarcerated in state and federal correctional facilities for marijuana violations. Of these, 28,650 marijuana offenders are state inmates, and 10,538 are federal prisoners. 

 

This year, marijuana accounts for 47.4% of all drug arrests. ALMOST HALF OF ALL THE WAR ON DRUGS IS WAGED ON MARIJUANA.

 

Perhaps most disturbing is comparing marijuana arrests to violent crime. This year, while 775,138 Americans were arrested for mere marijuana possession, only 597,447 people were arrested for all violent crimes combined, which includes murder, non-negligent manslaughter, forcible rape, robbery, and aggravated assault. 

 

Thank you Bobby McGee for your research – Idlewordship.com 

 

With all the positive effects of cannabis, hemp, marijuana, pot, the chronic, ganja, refer, herb – all different names for the same species of plant – how can anybody put credence in man made laws, especially laws whose original purpose was the marginalization of specific ethnicities? Have Americans learned nothing from the lessons of the past? I heard recently a quote – it sounds like Mark Twain, but I’m not sure who said it, if anyone famous – A society seldom gets the leaders it wants, but it ALWAYS gets the leaders it deserves. It’s really true.

To Be Concluded

Can of Bliss 2010 continues

In the 1930’s, after parts of former Mexico like Arizona and California and New Mexico had been annexed by the US, many Mexicans found themselves living in the newly created American West, the same land Mexicans had lived for generations, but now under new ownership – the result of new borders and quasi-military invasions. Many of these ‘locals’ grew and smoked marijuana for medicinal as well as for recreational purposes. 

 

EVERY society since the dawn of man has enjoyed mind altering substances like alcohol and other naturally occurring intoxicants. The first beers in Egypt and Ancient China were gruel like meal made from fermented grains.   Small children spin until they get dizzy and fall down, only to get up and do it again. Peyote Mushrooms, Morning Glory seeds, Jimson weed – many existing plants with hallucinogenic properties have played integral roles in the lives of many cultures of people for millennia. Even jailed prisoners make hallucinogens from moldy rye bread. It is human nature to enjoy a ‘buzz’ when the occasion arises. Getting high has been a universal hobby for every human civilization since the dawn of mankind. Coffee breaks are required by law in some US states still in 2010.

 

Because as America entered the 20th century, Mexicans were smoking cannabis, and because Mexicans now lived in the USA and couldn’t rightly be ‘removed’ from their land – Extermination, while it worked with the Native Americans and was the preferred form of ‘settlement’ by most European Imperialists during the 16th and 17th Century invastion of the ‘West Indies’, presently known as the Americas; and the 19th Century ‘Scramble for Africa’, as it has been termed, extermination had started to receive a lot of negative press in the newly created Global Press by the 20th century. Plus, there had already been much displacement as the incoming Americans took the better land. Extermination became a less common practice by colonial Americans achieving their manifest destiny. They opted to live side-by-side with Mexicans, since extermination was now considered not en vogue

 

White Americans needed an edge. Anti-cannabis legislation was one tool used to marginalize Mexicans and African- Americans living the US. Jazz Musicians like Louis Armstrong, Kid Ory and others, who were mostly African American and/or Creole – the 18th and 19th century French colonies, specifically New Orleans in Louisiana, named for the King of France, was the epicenter of a musical revolution. These mixed race Black French Americans created Jazz music. They were also targeted by anti-cannabis legislation. All the brass instruments: sax, trumpet, trombone, tuba, etc. are French, which partially explains why Jazz music has always been popular in France. Still, the darker elements of that culture found themselves persecuted.

 

That must have been a crazy time: the Deep South, plantations, French people; some Blacks free, some Blacks slaves; some Blacks famous musicians! Ann Rice, of vampire novel fame, wrote a really cool historical novel about New Orleans Creole culture at the end of the 19th century called Feast of All Saints, a stellar novel that puts the reader there at that time. Sure, all the stories, all the people are probably made up, but you feel like you are there; and it’s a strange time – early America. Gore Vidal also writes brilliant historical novels about Colonial era USA – Burr and Lincoln and 1876. Even if the stories may be ‘historically inaccurate’, I don’t think that is the point. 

 

Just like Culturebook – we are not writing history. History is a point of view. What Rice and Vidal give to their readers is a slice of life – at that time. What was it like when Alexander Hamilton got shot by Aaron Burr on grassy knoll in a duel, and due to the law of the land, that pre-meditated murder was not a crime?  A small audience even attended the sporty execution!  Bets were made on the outcome. Hamilton ended up on the 10 dollar bill. Aaron Burr never went on to higher office. Who’s Aaron Burr? He’s the man who shot Alexander Hamilton. That’s all he is remembered for; but in his time, he was a brilliant statesman.

 

Because, for the most part, only these groups – Blacks, Creoles, and Mexicans – openly smoked cannabis, it was easy for White Americans to get behind the new legislation. The government, police, school principals and business owners, local leaders: all were White men! Marijuana legislation was largely an effort to incarcerate and marginalize African Americans and Mexicans.

 

It’s difficult to get a good job with a criminal record, or documented proof that you are a ‘drug addict’. Movies like Refer Madness in the 1930’s sought to show white Americans, who were ignorant of cannabis’ history, that marijuana caused Black people to rape white women and Mexicans to act crazy. The film, Reefer Madness opens with minutes of scroll propaganda – Marihuana is a scourge on the youth…the most vile evil on the planet. Etc. Then the movie begins with an educated looking man, a well-known 1930’s actor, speaking for several minutes at a podium about this ‘atrocity’. He basically gives a 5 minute lecture restating what the scroll said; then, the dramatic rendition. Racist White Americans accepted this misinformation as truth.

 

William Randolph Hearst was instrumental in promoting this new legislation. Hearst owned many newspapers and magazines and by calling the plant marihuana for the first time, the name later became marijuana; in effect, this renaming separated this ‘new drug menace’ from its well known nomenclature – hemp or cannabis, an agricultural staple known the world over for millennia. This renaming was similar to the tactics used by the Thought Police in Orwell’s 1984And the word became flesh John 1:14   Carnitas the other white meat. The words, canvas and cannabis and are related entomologically. The Mona Lisa was painted on a cannabis canvas

 

What had been known and used the world over since the time of Jesus times three, had become suddenly some Mexican menace in America in the minds of late 1930’s White Americans, shortly after the repeal of alcohol’s prohibition, which lasted from 1920 till 1933. In 1933, liquor became legalized. In 1937, Marijuana became illegal. That 13 year ban on alcohol makes the Roaring 20s either dry; or severly hypocritical.

 

In the history of the United States, Prohibition, also known as The Noble Experiment, was the period from 1920 to 1933, during which time: the sale, manufacture, and transportation of alcohol for consumption were banned nationally, as mandated in the 18th Amendment to the US Constitution.

 

The Repeal of alcohol’s ban took place after people called for the change in law. The 21st amendment, which basically undid the 18th amendment, is unlike any other amendment to the constitution because the 21st amendment...

 

is the only amendment to have been ratified by state ratifying conventions, specially selected for one purpose [to repeal an existing law], whereas all other amendments have been ratified by state legislatures. The 21st is also the only amendment that was passed for the explicit purpose of repealing an amendment to the Constitution.  -- from Wikipedia

 

Four years after liquor’s ban was repealed, anti-hemp legislation went into effect. It was as if Organized Crime, which included crooked officials, police, and mobsters, suddenly needed another “safe/social drug” to control and profit from once liquor was off the criminal market.  That safe/social drug was hemp: IT IS ONLY FOR PROFIT AND GREED AND ORGANIZED CRIME AND RACIST PURPOSES THAT CANNABIS HAS EVER BEEN ILLEGAL IN THE US. 

 

People still refuse to see the truth, even in 2010 MMX, with all this information. Racist white Americans were quick to accept these new laws back in the 1930s and 1940’s, since they sought to protect their daughters from Blacks and Mexicans; but sub-consciously, they also sought to protect the better jobs available for themselves.

 

During the depressions of 1890, 1910, and of course the Great One, the first one where poor Americans got any government relief, begining 1929, many Whites didn’t want to work for low wages, so recently freed ‘slaves’ and Mexicans began taking those jobs, a trend that STILL continues and causes anti-Mexican legislation. Yes, I’m talking about Arizona 2010. 

 

Believing in racial superiority is a survival mechanism. Racist White Americans can not really be blamed for believing the hype because humans will believe anything if they are told something at birth and made to believe it their entire lives.

 

William R. Hearst had an agenda for launching this ‘anti-hemp’ campaign. Hearst was a major stockholder in the DuPont Corporation, which had just produced nylon – a completely synthetic fiber whose production pollutes the environment, but whose uses could replace those of hemp, and whose mass production could make the executives of DuPont extremely rich, if they could monopolize the production of such everyday items. 

 

In twenty years, most rope, tents, parachutes and other materials would be made from nylon; thus, replacing hemp entirely, making Dupont one of the biggest companies in the world. All hemp cultivation in the US ceased and factories polluting our environment were erected on those fields, metaphorically. For the next thirty years, cannabis use in the US virtually disappeared, or went underground into the ‘criminal world’, while factories that polluted the environment were erected globally. White stockholders in DuPont also got rich from this US government anti-hemp policy, and the environment has suffered ever since.

 

The 1960’s saw a resurgence of marijuana use with hippies. Most of the marijuana smoked in America came from Mexico, or from Columbia via Mexico. Lumbo it was called. In the early 1970’s, the US government in an effort to control the import of cannabis began spraying the poisonous chemical ‘paraquat’ over pot fields in Mexico, poisoning the land as well as the crop. The pot crop, which still came to America, and was subsequently smoked by Americas who were later hospitalized, never lessened in popularity.

 

The RESULT of this attack on cannabis crops in Mexico – marijuana cultivation moved to the States, namely Northern California and Hawaii, the regions whose climate were best suited to the tropical plant – those areas are moist and never get any snow! 

 

When Reagan started his war on drugs in the 1980’s and began burning and destroying crops in the Northern California Triangle of Trinity, Mendocino and Humboldt counties, and imprisoning small business men and farmers in Northern California with no prior criminal records, the cultivation of cannabis did not end – it moved indoors. The Triangle still has the highest concentration of cash crops in the entire country.

 

The result is modern medical marijuana. Grown indoors, in grow rooms across the country, but especially in the Triangle, or nearby Santa Cruz or Eureka, at optimal conditions designed by the most educated and talented botanists of the present day – a typical marijuana plant can go from seed to mature buds inches in length and grams in mass with maximum potency, the likes of which has never been seen in human history, in just three months. From clone to mature bud in just two months! 

 

All lighting, moisture, temperature, every possible condition is controlled by man and machine. Seasons mean nothing – a grow room can easily have up to 5 harvests a year. Nature has nothing to do with the modern cultivation of cannabis anymore. Products like lights and nutrients and watering apparatuses and timers specific to the purposes of lighting and watering marijuana plants outsell all other nursery items each year. The amount of sophistication and technology that goes into the cultivation of marijuana each year begs the question:

To be Continued

Vote YES on Prop 19 Legalize it!

Election Day being Monday, and today being the 4 year anniversary of my fathers' leaving this earth, I'll be presenting my essay, Can of Bliss from Culturebook Book Two in 3 parts.  Part one.

Can of Bliss 2010


Here is an analogy to expand your mind – Apartheid, South Africa; Slave Nation USA 1810; Nazi Germany: three demerits on Human History. What did these three localities have in common? Black people and Jews, respectively, were believed to be less than human. It was not socially acceptable for a White man or a German man to publicly date a Black woman or a Jewish woman. Raping them was not illegal; but public love was forbidden. Even impregnating / deserting these allegedly racially inferior women was not considered inappropriate behavior, if those indiscretions were kept out of the family spotlight. 

 

In Harper Lee’s novel, To Kill a Mockingbird, the character Mr. Dolphus Randolf drank out of a brown paper bag in public, didn’t shave, and dressed disheveled; so to let people think that he was a drunk. Why? Because Mr. Randolf was married to a Black woman in the South; and in the minds of his Southern neighbors, it was tolerable that he was married to a Black woman because of his alcoholism. Mr. Randolf didn’t drink. 

 

When 9 year old Scout Finch first drinks from Mr. Randolf’s bottle outside the courthouse, inside which her lawyer father Atticus Finch was defending a black man falsely accused of raping a white woman – Scout realized that the bagged, bottled beverage was Coca-Cola. Scout also realized her town’s hypocrisy. That small town was America. Tom Robinson, the black man accused of raping the white woman, defended by Atticus Finch; even though it was so obvious that he was innocent, Tom Robinson was convicted guilty, and later shot.

 

It’s not coca-cola. It’s rice!  Joe Strummer

 

The question is: if a white man in early 19th century America wanted to marry an African American woman; or if a German man in Nazi Germany fell in love with a Jewish woman, would it have been morally WRONG for these love torn men to pursue their love’s true interest? Sure, now with our 20/20 hindsight, it is easy to judge, but what about then? Should these lovers of ethnically different partners have renounced their affection, believed that the person they loved was of an inferior race, just because that’s what the culture deemed appropriate?  Because that is what the law of the land proclaimed? Because that’s what their moms and dads wanted? 

 

Whose law should these dissenters have followed?  In the case of marijuana, more commonly known in past times as HEMP or CANNABIS or REEFER, it is a crime to grow this plant, or to smoke this plant in 37 of the 50 American states. 13 American states allow smoking and growing, by prescription only.

Archeological evidence shows that humans have been cultivating and smoking cannabis for nearly 6000 years. What started out as just a weed, like millions of other species of green leafy plants inhabiting this earth: some flavorful and edible, some beautiful, some toxic, some that’ll give you a rash if you touch a leaf; some that have populated the planet since the time of dinosaurs. Green leafy plants that we pass on our way daily: while many other species of weed have gone extinct, cannabis has spread all over the globe. While cannabis still grows wild in some parts of the world, most of cannabis’s present cultivation is, and has been for millennia, an agricultural staple, a product of husbandry and devotion by humans for human consumption. Hashish, named from the Arabic word حشي meaning dry grass, was first developed by nomadic traders for easy transport and longevity; back when the Tigris and Euphrates river valleys were still fertile, while humanity was in its infancy. 

 

The uses of cannabis, for the last six thousand years have included the following – the raw material of paper, rope, clothing, any textile product that cotton or nylon can be made into in the modern day; it’s resin has been used as glue and as a lubricant for machine parts; it’s intoxicating effects have been used as medicine to treat women’s monthly discomfort, as well as, a general analgesic for all people. Women in ancient India didn’t have Motrin. 

 

The scientific literature now brims with potential uses for cannabis that extend beyond its well-known abilities to fend off nausea and block pain in people with cancer and AIDS. Cannabis derivatives may combat multiple sclerosis, Crohn’s disease and other inflammatory conditions, the new research finds. Cannabis may even kill cancerous tumors. -- Quoted directly from Science News Vol 177 6/19/10 Not Just a High by Nathan Seppa    

My mother subscribes to Science News.
  I read the article over coffee, one June morning, before driving my mother to work. Information about the myriad of medical uses of cannabis is readily available. People just refuse to accept the use of cannabis in modern America on ideological grounds.

 

US President Obama in 2010 began his plea for health care reform, “I am not an Ideologue!”  Finally! Let’s look beyond labels and religion and beliefs and taboo and stigmas and look at FACTS! In early America, by the 1920’s, at virtually every pharmacy in every city in America, cannabis in tincture form could be purchased legally without prescription as an analgesic.

Many older Americans knew well what cannabis was. Early colonial charters mandated that a certain percentage of farm land MUST be allocated for hemp cultivation, since its uses were so plentiful. Jefferson, and all his half-African American children – Jefferson had many 50/50 children and sister-girlfriends, like Sally Hemmings, who would’ve been his wife, had other White Americans been more tolerant of mixed marriages.  All the founding father of Virginia had hemp farms. George Washington, not to be confused with George Jefferson, even had an underground level under his main dining area; so during meal banquets, black slaves could do all the food preparation and serving, but never appear in person – dumbwaiters did all the presentation of comida. “Oh look, here’s the ham!” Who cooked or served the succulent pork dish or washed the dishes never became a concern for rich Americans who could afford ‘foreign help’. Things have not changed much since 1787. 

When and why did anti-cannabis legislation begin?


To be Continued

Pages

Subscribe to Koreabridge MegaBlog Feed