“What cancer taught me about marijuana.”
Posted on February 29, 2008
By Diana Wagman
Ahh, cancer. One learns so much from being diagnosed with a death-sentence disease. Of course, 95 percent of it is stuff you would rather not know, but that other 5 percent is downright interesting. For example, America’s Next Top Model is much more fun to watch when you’ve lost 15 pounds without trying. During chemotherapy, vanilla smells good, but vanilla wafers taste disgusting. And eyelashes really do have a purpose. But the most compelling fact I learned was about my friends. Not just what you would expect: How they cooked for my family and took me to doctors and pretended not to notice how bad I looked and, most important, that I could not – cannot – survive without them. No, what really shocked me was how many of my old, dear, married, parenting, job-holding friends smoke pot. I am not kidding. People I never expected dropped by to deliver joints and buds and private stash. The DEA could have set a security cam over my front door and made some serious dents in the marijuana trade. The poets and musicians were not a surprise, but lawyers? CEOs? Republicans?
OK, I admit it, in college I smoked dope with the rest of them. I mean, everybody was doing it – an excuse I do not allow my children. Plus, I felt my only other option was alcohol, and the sweet drinks I liked were too fattening. But that was a long time ago, and since then I have learned to drink bourbon straight, get high on life and appreciate the advantages of not doing anything you wouldn’t want your kids to do.
I thought all my friends felt the same. Boy, was I wrong. When I surfaced from my chemo haze enough to care about anyone else, I was curious. Why do so many 40- and 50-somethings still get high? I asked my suppliers.
Pain was the No. 1 answer. Not just the psychic angst of being mothers and fathers to teenagers, but real physical pain. We’re all beginning to fall apart, and a couple of tokes really take the edge off the sciatica, rotator cuff injuries, irritable bowel syndrome and migraines. Obviously some of us use drugs to ease the lives of quiet desperation we never thought we would have back when we were getting stoned the first time. Our drug use now is really the same as in college. Then I got high to relax, to gain confidence, to forget I was an overweight, mediocre college student terrified of the future. Now we get stoned to relax, forget our disappointing careers and mask our terror of not just our own future but the future for our kids. Read more
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Sharing: Susan Sontag, 2001
Posted on February 27, 2008
To this appalled, sad American and New Yorker, America has never seemed farther from an acknowledgement of reality than it’s been in the face of last Tuesday’s monstrous dose of reality. The disconnect between what happened and how it might be understood, and the self-righteous drivel and outright deceptions being peddled by virtually all of our public figures and TV commentators is startling, depressing. The voices licensed to follow the event seem to have joined together in a campaign to infantilize the public.Â
Where is the acknowledgement that this was not a “cowardly” attack on “civilization” or “liberty” or “humanity” or “the free world” but an attack on the world’s self-proclaimed superpower, undertaken as a consequence of specific American alliances and actions? How many citizens are aware of the ongoing bombing of Iraq? And if the word “cowardly” is to be used, it might be more aptly applied to those who kill from beyond the range of retaliation, high in the sky, than to those willing to die themselves in order to kill others. In the matter of courage (a morally neutral virtue): whatever may be said of the perpetrators of Tuesday’s slaughter, they were not cowards.
Our leaders are bent on convincing us that everything is okay. America is not afraid. “They” will be found and punished (whoever “they” may be). We have a robotic president who assures us that America still stands tall. A wide spectrum of public figures strongly opposed to policies being pursued abroad by the Bush administration apparently feel free to say nothing more than that they stand, along with the whole American people, united and unafraid, behind President Bush. Commentators inform us that grief centers are in operation. Of course, we are not being shown any horrific images of what happened to the people working at the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. That might dispirit us. It was not until Thursday that public officials (with the exception of Mayor Giuliani) dared offer some estimates of the numbers of lives lost. Read more
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Cruisin on a Monday Afternoon
Posted on February 26, 2008
 | Filed Under Paparazzi | 2 Comments
If the election was today
Posted on February 25, 2008
| Filed Under Flap your lip | 2 Comments
Drugs, Me & My Parents — part two
Posted on February 24, 2008
We circled around the kitchen table, the same one where we have breakfast and dinner, and blow out the candles on birthday cakes. Four months we’ve been living together, complements of a perfect shit storm of bad health and worse finances. These aren’t good times for dollars and cents, though in other key ways they’ve been better than expected. My family is finally getting along. It only took us thirty years. Yeah, money is tight, but at least the long knives aren’t being sharpened. Instead, we’re gradually morphing into this hip and funky, 21st century version of the American nuclear family. Two eternally patient parents and two charming filial freeloaders (read: starving adult children) living in peaceful coexistence, Kumbaya, Kumbaya. Never in my life did I think that it was possible. Dad is sixty-one, mom is nebulously in her fifties, and little sis is twenty-six. I’ll admit not being excited at first, for it seemed sadistic to have no choice but to fly home to the family nest. I haven’t lived with my family since I was a teenager. I had no clue what to expect. But my parents’ “golden years home” is surprisingly laissez-faire. My parents are slowly growing accustomed to life in Southern California. All of us keep to our own chill schedules. Dad’s up at four, watching golf and police procedurals. Mom rises with the sun to coo at the dog and play on the computer. My sister and I would sleep until noon if there was any such thing as a loving god. The parents are off to bed by ten, while we’re up into the small digit hours. Music also tells the story. Barbra croons through the speakers each morning. Amy Winehouse pounds at night. I think the dog is going nuts.
Add in a medical marijuana service and Weeds ain’t got a damn thing on us. Yet how do my baby boomer, semi-teetotaler parents feel about my opening a medical marijuana business? My parents are filled with contradictions, so of course their feelings are decidedly mixed. My parents have smoked half a joint in their life—and that was all my dad. They’ve been married 39 years and are not the type to spend long weekends camped in the forest, dressed in flowing robes of hemp. In Brady Bunch terms, they’re like Jan and Peter—deeply earnest middle children always striving to do right. And then here I am, like Cousin Oliver, fucking up their shit. Who else but their son would launch a website to announce getting sticky icky by the pound? How are they responding? Very calmly. When I ask them why, they say, “Because we trust you.” Read more
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Victorian Psychedelic
Posted on February 19, 2008
Photo by Erika Ramel
Sharing: David Sedaris
Posted on February 17, 2008
It was Easter Sunday in Chicago, and my sister Amy and I were attending an afternoon dinner at the home of our friend John. The weather was nice, and he’d set up a table in the backyard so that we might sit in the sun. Everyone had taken their places, when I excused myself to visit the bathroom, and there, in the toilet, was the absolute biggest turd I have ever seen in my life – no toilet paper or anything, just this long and coiled specimen, as thick as a burrito.Â
I flushed the toilet, and the big turd trembled. It shifted position, but that was it. The thing wasn’t going anywhere. I thought briefly of leaving it behind for someone else to take care of, but it was too late for that. Too late, because before getting up from the table, I’d stupidly told everyone where I was going. “I’ll be back in a minute,” I’d said. “I’m just going to run to the bathroom.” My whereabouts were public knowledge. I should have said I was going to make a phone call. I’d planned to urinate and maybe run a little water over my face, but now I had this to deal with.
The tank refilled, and I made a silent promise. The deal was that if this thing would go away, I’d repay the world by performing some unexpected act of kindness. I flushed the toilet a second time, and the big turd spun in a lazy circle. “Go on,” I whispered. “Scott! Shoo!” I turned away, ready to perform my good deed, but when I looked back down, there it was, bobbing to the surface in a fresh pool of water.
Just then someone knocked on the door, and I started to panic.
“Just a minute.”
At an early age my mother sat me down and explained that everyone has bowel movements. “Everyone,” she’d said. “Even the president and his wife.” She’d mentioned our neighbors, the priest, and several of the actors we saw each week on television. I’d gotten the overall picture, but natural or not, there was no way I was going to take responsibility for this one.
“Just a minute.”
I seriously considered lifting this turd out of the toilet and tossing it out the window. It honestly crossed my mind, but John lived on the ground floor and a dozen people were seated at a picnic table ten feet away. They’d see the window open and notice something dropping to the ground. And these were people who would surely gather round and investigate. Then there I’d be with my unspeakably filthy hands, trying to explain that it wasn’t mine. Read more
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Doctors to Government: Legalize Pot
Posted on February 15, 2008
The American College of Physicians, second in size to only the American Medical Association, called Thursday for the U.S. federal government to end its ban on marijuana as medicine and move forward with research into the drug’s therapeutic utilities. The 13-page position paper was approved by the college’s governing board of regents and posted on the group’s website. With 124,000 members, the group is the largest organization of doctors of internal medicine in the United States. The paper contends that acrimonious debate over marijuana legalization has obscured good science that demonstrates medicinal benefits of cannabis. “We felt the time had come to speak about this. We’d like to clear up the uncertainty and anxiety of patients and physicians over this drug,” Dr. David Dale, the group’s president, told the Los Angeles Times.
The report’s introduction states: “Marijuana has been smoked for its medicinal properties for centuries. Preclinical, clinical, and anecdotal reports suggest numerous potential medical uses for marijuana. Although the indications for some conditions have been well documented, less information is available about other potential medical uses. Additional research is needed to further clarify the therapeutic value of cannabinoids and determine optimal routes of administration. Unfortunately, research expansion has been hindered by a complicated federal approval process, limited availability of research-grade marijuana, and the debate over legalization. ACP believes the science on medical marijuana should not be obscured or hindered by the debate surrounding the legalization of marijuana for general use.” Read more
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Rhythm from a Red Car
Posted on February 14, 2008
How to Starbucks on $1.45 a day*
Posted on February 13, 2008
1. Order hot tea. Pay cashier $1.45 **
2. Sit, work, read, talk, or whatever you do for an hour
3. Proceed to next Starbucks
4. Present cup with lid removed. Request hot water refill.***
5. Repeat to infinity
* Assumes you’re willing to forgo Starbucks marble pound cake.
** Unless you ordered a Banana Walnut loaf. In this case, add $1.85.
*** Don’t order the grande mocha frap with shot of peppermint.
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