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Cannabis cinema at The 7th Annual Artivist Film Festival
12.01.2010
05:56 pm
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Frequent readers of this blog know that California’s thriving medical marijuana scene is rather…uh… near and dear to our hearts. Tomorrow night in Los Angeles, at The 7th Annual Artivist Film Festival, there will be a free festival screening of director Kevin Booth’s How Weed Won the West documentary at the Egyptian Theatre, 6712 Hollywood Boulevard, at 7p.m. Booth will be in attendance for a Q&A after the screening. He will be joined by NORML’s Allen St. Pierre and Law Enforcement Against Prohibition’s Lt. Diane Goldstein. All screenings at the Artivist Film Festival are free, tickets for How Weed Won the West can be reserved here.

While California is going bankrupt, one business is booming. How Weed Won the West is the story of the growing medical cannabis/marijuana industry in the greater Los Angeles area, with over 700 dispensaries doling out the buds. As a treatment for conditions ranging from cancer and AIDS, to anxiety, ADHD, and insomnia, cannabis is quickly proving itself as a healthier natural alternative to many prescription drugs. Following the story of Organica, a collective owned by Jeff Joseph that was raided by the DEA in August of ‘09, the film shows that although some things have changed with Obama in office, the War on Drugs is nowhere near over. From Kevin Booth, the producer/director of Showtime’s American Drug War, How Weed Won the West puts California forward as an example to the rest of the country by documenting how legalizing marijuana can help save the economy.


 

 
Also screening for free at the Artivist Film Festival in a similar “herbal genre” is Hempsters, 9:00pm on Friday December 3 at the Egyptian with the director in attendance for a Q&A afterwards:

This lively documentary directed by Michael Henning, begins with the arrest of Woody Harrelson for planting four feral hemp seeds in Kentucky and his subsequent trial and acquittal, then joins traveling Hemp activist Craig Lee and a number of featured old-school Kentucky tobacco farmers who just want to grow the multipurpose crop as a way to save their farms. Viewers meet Alex White Plume, leader of the Lakota “Tiospaye” (family clan), and the first family to plant industrial hemp on American soil since the 1950′s. He makes a startling case that his right to grow hemp is a sovereignty issue. Julia Butterfly Hill goes to extreme lengths to protest the pulping of old-growth forests by living for over two years at the top of a 1,000 year old redwood tree in Northern California. Gatewood Galbraith, the fiery orator of the US Reform Party, attempts to bring to the public at large to its senses in his own inimitable style. A hyper-paced ride with a sizzling soundtrack, this motion picture puts hemp at the heart of just about every grassroots issue in America today. Featured players include Willie Nelson, Merle Haggard, Ralph Nader and Woody Harrelson. More than a political study of cannabis, Hempsters is a rousing portrait of our country’s most spirited and sensible free-thinkers.

 

 
Get free tickets for the Hempsters screening here.

The 7th Annual Artivist Film Festival

Posted by Richard Metzger
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12.01.2010
05:56 pm
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‘The Hippie Temptation’ exposes the shocking truth of youth run wild!!
12.01.2010
02:38 am
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“My mom thinks that where I’m living down here the Hippies are a bunch of dirty, filthy, infectious people. This is my bag and I found my place here and I scream and I holler and I’m happy.”

CBS TV documentary from 1967 exposes the shocking truth about America’s drug-addled youth. Prepare yourself for a terrifying descent into an LSD hellhole. 50 minutes of pure hedonism with Harry Reasoner.
 

 
More hippie filth after the jump…

READ ON
Posted by Marc Campbell
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12.01.2010
02:38 am
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Woman *really* enjoys Ecstasy at public pool
11.29.2010
12:58 pm
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I believe this is a reaction to Ecstasy and not ‘shrooms. Nothing to see here, move along…

(via Buzzfeed)

Posted by Tara McGinley
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11.29.2010
12:58 pm
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23rd High Times Cannabis Cup: Strain entries
11.28.2010
01:15 pm
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This year’s winner Derry from Barney’s
 
And the 23rd High Times Cannabis Cup winner is:
Barney’s Coffeehouse Amsterdam for its strain ‘Tangerine Dream’.

I may just have to start smoking this stuff again. Beautiful aren’t they?
 

 

Posted by Marc Campbell
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11.28.2010
01:15 pm
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Willie Nelson busted for pot (again)
11.27.2010
10:33 am
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The Associated Press newswire reports that Willie Nelson was—once again—arrested for possession of marijuana. What’s the fucking point of this? Chances are that virtually anytime Willie is in that tour bus, he’s got a joint burning. Most Americans would not be surprised to hear this, either. He’s Willie Nelson. You expect him to smoke pot. He’s not shy about it and never was. So the officer smelled pot, it’s his job, blah, blah, blah… who cares? It’s stupid. Willie Nelson is 77-years-old. He had six ounces on him. Chances are this American icon doesn’t give a shit what the law of the land is, has NO INTENTION of stopping smoking and… why the hell can’t they just leave him alone? The guy is an American ICON. Can’t they just give him a doctor’s recommendation letter that works in all 50 states and be done with this harassment of a legend? He’s Willie Fucking Nelson and he just wants to get stoned. Have a little respect!

SIERRA BLANCA, Texas (AP)—A U.S. Border Patrol spokesman says country singer Willie Nelson was charged with marijuana possession after 6 ounces was found aboard his tour bus in Texas.

Patrol spokesman Bill Brooks says the bus pulled into the Sierra Blanca, Texas, checkpoint about 9 a.m. Friday. Brooks says an officer smelled pot when a door was opened and a search turned up marijuana.

Brooks says the Hudspeth County sheriff was contacted and Nelson was among three people arrested.

Sheriff Arvin West didn’t immediately return a phone message left at his home Friday, but he told the El Paso Times that Nelson claimed the marijuana was his. The singer was held briefly a $2,500 bond before being released.

Nelson spokeswoman Elaine Schock declined to comment when contacted via e-mail by The Associated Press.

Well. here’s my comment. Hands off Willie… and his stash! Who’s getting hurt when Willie Nelson sparks a joint? This is ridiculous.

Posted by Richard Metzger
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11.27.2010
10:33 am
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Screw Black Friday and watch this instead!
11.26.2010
12:58 pm
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I really like the part where it doesn’t do anything.

Posted by Tara McGinley
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11.26.2010
12:58 pm
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Dog vibrator
11.25.2010
03:35 am
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10 minutes of a dog in a suit laughing maniacally. That’s it.

I play this loop late at night just moments before I make love.

I run the audio thru 16 inch kicker subwoofers and point them in the direction of my scrotal sack. When the the beasty dog starts cackling the vibrations convert my scrotum to a tweeter resonating at a supersonic level. My lover resonates and cums immediately while HORNY fur-bearing creatures in our neighborhood converge in a chorus of frenzied squealing recalling the mystical utterances of Lord Shiva and his slut Shakti spun through the cosmic vortex where God is trying desperately to pinch off a cosmic loaf. Life is a shitty deal. Dogs know this. Therefore they laugh.

If you are of the right mind this video will send you into realms of ecstasy rarely experienced by the comman man or woman. Consider this loop a prayer wheel of sorts. Make no judgment. Relax, breath. Let the waves of canine laughter flow over you. Within moments you too will enter the realm of the Laughing Dog, where anything is possible.

God is Dog spelled backwards and dogs don’t know how to spell. Om mani padme hum.
 

Posted by Marc Campbell
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11.25.2010
03:35 am
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Harry Smith smokes a joint and gets you high: A double dose of alchemy
11.20.2010
03:53 am
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A Harry Smith double bill.

The first video is Harry smoking a joint while talking with Patrick Hulsey in New York City in 1999.

In the second video, East Village raconteur, animator, videographer and pop culture archivist M. Henry Jones of Snakemonkey TV recalls and recreates the initial thrill of discovering Harry Smith’s work.
 

 

 

Posted by Marc Campbell
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11.20.2010
03:53 am
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Lenny Bruce’s famous glue sniffing routine
11.19.2010
01:02 am
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Lenny Bruce doing his famous airplane glue bit on the Steve Allen Show in 1958. A classic. I’ve heard this routine on record and read it on the page, but I’ve never seen Lenny perform it live.

Thanks to Josie for uploading this to Youtube.
 

Posted by Marc Campbell
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11.19.2010
01:02 am
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What’s gotten into the world’s coke supply?
11.12.2010
03:24 pm
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There is a fascinating 3-part series in The Stranger, by investigative reporter Brendan Kiley, that goes in-depth examining how a dangerous new cutting element is being added to the world’s cocaine supply. Levamisole is a medicine used to de-worm livestock, the DEA has reported that nearly 75% of the coke seized in this country during 2009 was cut with levamisole. (In 2005 only 1.9% of the seized cocaine had been cut with levamisole). Levamisole can cause an immune system failure know as “agranulocytosis” leaving users vulnerable to infections and causing skin lesions due to tissue swelling it can cause.

Yuck. If ever there was a time to “just say no” to cocaine (admittedly a drug I’ve never had much of a taste for) now might be the time…

Levamisole is an unusual—and unprecedented—cutting agent because it’s more expensive than other cuts, it makes some customers sick, and it’s being cut into the cocaine before it hits the United States. Smugglers typically prefer to move pure product, which is less bulky and results in less chance of detection. “The Mystery of the Tainted Cocaine” offered a few theories about why South American drug manufacturers (mostly Colombian) are cutting their cocaine with levamisole.

A quick review of those theories:

1. Levamisole might produce a cocainelike stimulant effect either on its own or in conjunction with cocaine (in 2004, racehorses treated with levamisole were found to metabolize the deworming drug into an amphetamine-like stimulant called aminorex), meaning the product could produce a more substantial high with less pure cocaine.

2. Levamisole, unlike other cutting agents, retains the iridescent, fish-scale sheen of pure cocaine, making it easier to visually pass off levamisole-tainted cocaine as pure.

3. Levamisole passes the “bleach test,” a quick street test that reveals cuts like sugar or lidocaine (but, because of a chemical anomaly, not levamisole).

4. Levamisole is a bulking agent for crack. Making crack involves purifying cocaine and washing out the cutting agents, but levamisole molecules slip through this process—meaning a dealer can produce more volume of crack with less pure cocaine.

5. All of the above.

If levamisole can do several of these things, it becomes (in evolutionary terms) an advantageous genetic mutation, a cut that may have started as an accident but showed beneficial properties, so was passed on from one batch of cocaine to the next, from one generation to another, like a new gene.

The evolutionary, all-of-the-above theory is especially compelling because Colombia’s cocaine-production market is so fractured and decentralized, it’s unlikely that one mind is calling all the shots about cocaine’s manufacture and distribution. After the breakup of the Medellín and Cali cartels in the mid-1990s, hundreds (maybe even thousands) of independent cocaine producers leaped into the void. While FARC and the paramilitaries control much of the cocaine trade—such as the camps where Diego worked—they don’t control and centralize production technology to the degree that the Medellín and Cali cartels did.

Meaning: Those hundreds (and maybe thousands) of independent producers must have independently decided to use the same cutting agent. And even if levamisole looks like cocaine, behaves in bleach tests like cocaine, and can bulk up crack in a way that other cutting agents can’t, why not wait to cut it once it has crossed the border?

That’s still a mystery.

As the article also points out, by the time the cocaine reaches the northern city of Seattle, it’s not only been stepped on before it even leaves its south of the border country of origin, but it’s also probably gotten stepped on again and again from stops between San Diego and Sacramento! By the time it gets to Seattle (or London, for that matter) is there even any cocaine left at all in it anymore?

Read more of The Mystery of the Tainted Cocaine by Brendan Kiley (The Stranger)
 
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“Line of cattle dewormer, anyone? Help yourself!”

Posted by Richard Metzger
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11.12.2010
03:24 pm
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