Thursday, October 30, 2008

Halloween? Life is crazy and this blog sucks. Stop reading it.

I realized today that Halloween is upon us! My once-favorite holiday I had nearly forgotten!!! Why? Because I have sucked lately. Here is why:

1. My granddad was in ICU for three weeks after he had a stroke. I was doing some driving down to the hospital where he was admitted to visit him. He just got moved to an old folks home, so he's in good hands and I can be less stressed out about his situation.

2. I haven't been able to write for fun (i.e. journal or blog). Instead, I've been writing thesis proposals, artist bios, et al. Not my favorite - I feel like less of a person without at least some kind of creative outlet. I've just been overloaded with projects, and at the end of the day I'm entirely too exhausted to reflect on the things I've done and felt. If I'm not reflecting, am I really learning and taking any bit of value from my everyday experiences? Subconsciously perhaps. But I don't feel like I'm living much of a life right now. There's just no time to think about it.

3. I work. A lot.

4. Ganja consumption has been reduced by almost 70%. (literally, I checked my bank statement and compared my expenditures from the past month to August) Not something I consciously set out to do, but a result of my new crappy busy lifestyle. The days when I could smoke, blog and watch countless retarded youtube videos are long gone. Now that's depressing....

At one time, I had new stories about handsome men in my life, bourbon, fancy places, sleazy places, ATV's, personal trainers... all kinds of wrong. The Sexy Summer is long gone, and now I'm amidst the Ass-Kicking Autumn of '08. I don't even have enough time to think about what I want to be for Halloween!!!!!! I am just really confused about how my super sweet lifestyle has developed into this.

I just want to smoke a j, take a nap and forget about it. Maybe wake up for a milk shake and a manicure when it's halfway finished. Especially if it is a UDF pumpkin pie ice cream milk shake!

xoxoxo

killer fuckin budz

...i think i graduated from high school with these bastards. I'm posting this in the Halloween spirit. I really don't like to see blood and the like at all. However, I do have a weakness for stoner humor.

Tuesday, October 28, 2008

SEAMANSHIP!

the kitten has my vote, even though he is a bit too liberal for my taste.



the election might be a little less scary if the political commentary didn't sync up so damn well with these "replacement" candidates....

Saturday, October 25, 2008

Ron Paul talks about Obama's notion of "Change"



Once again, the man is on to something...

I will be so glad when this election is over. I don't like either of the mainstream candidates. Obama is a good liberal (if there really is such a thing) and McCain sucks all around, but especially sucks at being a Republican. I don't even want to think about Biden and Palin...

I'm trying to think of countries with free-market capitalism where I could go live for a while... free-markets, anyone? I can't think of one true free-market in the whole world. Most countries are mixed market, with some government intervention allowed. But true free-markets?

Happy Halloween from Yucko the Clown

Ron Paul on the current economy


Yet another bold, but educated, move from the most outspoken man in congress.

Friday, October 17, 2008

Thank you, Ron Paul, for your proposed H.R. 5843: Cannabis Decriminalization

House of Representatives to Consider Cannabis Decriminalization!
Tell Your Representative to Support H.R. 5843!
NORML is pleased to report that H.R. 5843, an "Act to Remove Federal Penalties for Personal Use of Marijuana by Responsible Adults," has been introduced in the House of Representatives by Representatives Barney Frank and Ron Paul.

This measure, if passed, would strip the federal government of its authority to arrest responsible adult cannabis consumers. NORML founder and Legal Director Keith Stroup worked extensively with Frank’s staff to write this important legislation, which represents the first cannabis decriminalization measure introduced in Congress in 24 years.

Under current federal law, the penalty for cannabis possession is up to one year imprisonment and a $1,000 fine.

Please take a moment today to write your Representative and urge him to support this important legislation.


FYI: While Ron Paul and his bros are working to eradicate these asinine federal penalties, there still exist repercussions at the state level.

State of Kentucky: You can have in your possession up to 8 oz, and the penalties are up to a year in jail (which no one ever serves) and a $500 fine.

City of Lexington, KY: You can have in your possession less than one ounce, and get caught with it up to 5 times before jail is even considered.

State of Ohio: You can have less than a 100 g in your possession, pay a $100 fine, and never even see it as a misdemeanor on your record.

Corbin, KY: The Big Shiny Buckle of the Marijuana Belt

When I say that I'm used to the homegrown shit, I'm not lying. I grew up in what is now nationally known as the "Marijuana Belt", which spans across eastern and southeastern Kentucky and eastern Tennessee. Ironically, the Marijuana Belt overlaps a good deal with the Bible Belt. No chance of these d'roors droppin'. Below is an article on crop control. However, before you read it in its entirety, do realize that the type of logic employed here is horribly flawed for a number of reasons:
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Perhaps the most laughable is the fiscal perspective. This article specifically cites the regional poverty as a result of the failing economy in southeastern Kentucky. I could go on and on about the socioeconomic challenges this region faces, as my father had to get a job three hours from home because there was nothing available within his field in the area. At any rate, this article BOASTS of keeping 1 billion dollars out of one of the poorest regions in the nation. Furthermore, they are spending 1.5 million in state revenue and 6 million in federal dollars on keeping this money out of eastern Kentucky. Then they have the fucking nerve to come out and say that they want the growers to Tennessee! Aside from being sick today, this article singlehandedly ruined my day.

Read on, dude:

Kentucky goes after "Marijuana Belt" growers
By Chris Kenning, The (Louisville) Courier-Journal
BARBOURVILLE, Ky. — Deep in the Appalachian woods near the Knox-Bell County line, Kentucky State Police Trooper Dewayne Holden's Humvee belched smoke and roared as it struggled up what once was an old logging trail.
As his three-truck convoy stopped at a clearing atop a 3,000-foot ridge, Holden grabbed a machete and joined eight other armed troopers and National Guard members, hiking toward a hill under some power lines.

Keeping an eye out for nail pits, pipe bombs and poison-snake booby traps, they found fresh ATV tracks.

The pot growers had beaten them to the prize: Gone were the 40 to 50 marijuana plants worth as much as $100,000 that Holden spotted from a helicopter more than a week earlier. Only six spindly plants were left.

"Well, that's six they won't get," he says, shrugging and pulling them out of the dirt. "Sometimes they just get here before we do."

Welcome to the battle police and marijuana growers wage each fall in Kentucky's remote Appalachian counties, where 75% of the state's top cash crop is grown.

According to officials at the Office of National Drug Policy's Appalachia High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area Program (HIDTA), Kentucky produces more marijuana than any other state except California, making it home to one of the nation's more intensive eradication efforts — a yearly game of harvest-time cat and mouse in national forests, abandoned farms, shady hollows, backyards and mountainsides.

"We're essentially in a race with the grower to get it before he does," says state police Lt. Ed Shemelya, head of the eradication unit. This time of year, "it's not uncommon for us to be on one side of a hill eradicating, and on the other a grower is harvesting."

More than 100 state police, guard members, DEA agents, U.S. Forest Service spotters and others are part of a strike force based in London, Ky., that works dawn to dark, sometimes roping into remote patches from Blackhawk helicopters.

With a budget of $1.5.million and help from a $6.million federal anti-drug effort in the region, last year the state seized 557,628 marijuana plants worth an estimated $1.billion.

Authorities say their efforts keep drugs off the streets and illicit profits out of criminal hands. But critics call it a waste of time and money that has failed to curb availability or demand.

"Trying to eradicate marijuana is like taking a teaspoon and saying you're going to empty the Atlantic Ocean," says Gary Potter, an Eastern Kentucky University professor of criminal justice who has researched the issue for decades.

Traps and tradition

On a rainy morning at the Civil Air Patrol airfield just outside London, National Guard pilots, DEA agents and state police sip coffee and await their morning briefing.

On the wall hangs a T-shirt reading, "Welcome to the Jungle: Kentucky Eradication 2007," a marker of how big the pot business has become since taking root in the area in the 1970s.

A typical day will involve hitting 15 to 20 marijuana plots — most spotted by Holden or another pilot in a helicopter. They have learned to spot the tell-tale earthen trails and bluish-green of pot patches. They mark the GPS coordinates, then guide in ground forces to cut and burn the crop.

A display case in the squat concrete building where they've gathered is a reminder of the booby traps they might face: Pipe bombs with trip wires, fishing hooks strung face-high across trails, sharpened bamboo sticks, ankle-crushing bear traps; and boards pounded through with three-inch nails that are laid on the ground and covered with leaves.

"Some growers will take a poisonous snake and with monofilament wire, tie it to the plot," Shemelya says, leaving police to find "one (very mad) pissed-off copperhead."

The traps are meant mainly for thieves. Most growers found on the sites, even armed ones, flee when police arrive. Still, the booby-traps are a hazard. A few years ago, three growers blew themselves up rigging a pipe bomb. One of Shemelya's men has had his face sliced with hooks, and another was injured after stepping into a "spike pit," he says.

This morning, rain and a mechanical problem prompt the team to head out without the chopper — although they know it'll be easy to walk right past a giant pot patch amid the thick curtains of Appalachian forest.

The remote and rugged terrain, including the 700,000 acres of the Daniel Boone National Forest, is a pot-grower's paradise — its perfect soil and climate give it a key place in America's "Marijuana Belt."

But the reasons go beyond the landscape.

Many of the small towns of Eastern Kentucky, steeped in a tradition of bootlegging moonshine, also have high rates of unemployment and poverty and in some cases, public corruption, according to federal drug officials. People can make as much as $2,000 from a single plant, an often irresistible draw when good-paying jobs are scarce. Much of what is harvested is carried in car trunks to such cities as Pittsburgh, Cleveland and Detroit, authorities say.

The estimated worth of seized plants alone far outstrips Kentucky's other crops. Federal statistics from the Department of Agriculture for 2005 show state receipts for tobacco were $342 million and corn was $336 million, compared with close to $1 billion of pot eradicated last year by HIDTA.

Over time, growing pot has become an "accepted and even encouraged" part of the culture in Appalachia, according to a 2006 report from the Office of National Drug Control Policy.

Still, authorities complain that in some counties it is difficult to get a jury to indict, much less convict, a marijuana grower.

"In one county, we had 45 minutes of surveillance video of a man cultivating. We couldn't even get beyond a grand jury. What better evidence can you have?" Shemelya says.

Holden says that unless a patch he cuts down is huge or contains traceable evidence, he rarely goes knocking at nearby homes in hopes of ferreting out the grower. Everyone knows who it is, he says, but no one tells.

"It's very engrained in the culture," he says.

Dispute over success

At one edge of London's tiny downtown is a bank building with reflective windows. It's not listed on the directory, but upstairs, behind a security door, is the carpeted office of Appalachia High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area, or HIDTA.

The 68 counties in Eastern Kentucky, eastern Tennessee and western West Virginia that make up the area have less than 1% of the country's population, according to Census and National Drug Intelligence Center data, but HITDA figures indicate the region contained roughly 10% of the marijuana eradicated nationwide in 2006.

Director C. Frank Rapier, speaking in a loping Eastern Kentucky accent, ticks off the success of marijuana eradication — known as "whack and stack" to the locals.

With the help of HIDTA money of $6 million, which covers three states, drug agents destroyed more than a half-million plants last year in Kentucky alone and netted 512 arrests. So far this year, the anti-drug effort has snagged 365,000 plants from more than 3,000 plots in Kentucky, Rapier says.

Since eradication started in the 1990s, Rapier says, the national forests are a little safer for visitors. There's less marijuana, which he believes is a gateway to harder drugs. And last year an estimated $1 billion worth of profits were kept out of Kentucky.

This year, drought has done some of the strike force's work: The total number of plants destroyed and their street value will be down significantly because dry conditions withered many plants, according to Rapier and Shemelya.

But overall, Rapier says, the team's work has resulted in the average plot size declining from 300-400 plants to less than 80. And he says the Mexican drug gangs that control much of the marijuana growing in California have stayed away.

"It's been very successful," he says.

Potter, who has done field research that has put him in touch with many current and former growers, has a different view.

"Simply cutting down and burning plants does no good at all," he says, adding that growers are just planting more in scattered plots, often under netting or shaded areas.

They also shore up profits by boosting levels of THC, or delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol — the chemical that causes a high — to 15% today from 3% in the 1970s to 15% today.

Potter also argues that eradication programs often exaggerate the street value of the plants they pull up as a way to justify their existence.

"There's more marijuana, better marijuana, more people smoking and more profits to growers and dealers than ever before," he says. "I don't care what KSP and DEA says, by the mid-1990s the war on drugs was over, and the traffickers won."

Last year's National Survey on Drug Use and Health showed that about 40% of Americans age 12 or older have tried marijuana at least once. Nearly 11% say they used it within the past year.

Criminal justice professor Potter, who lives and teaches in Richmond, says he also believes that more powerful dope and greater police pressure has raised the stakes, and the danger.

"Last summer, I was out in the rural part of the county bumming around with my Jack Russell," he says. "I ran into three guys who were heavily armed. One said, 'You really don't want to be here.' Twenty years ago, they would've offered you a joint — now they're chasing you away with rifles."

Allen St. Pierre — director of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws based in Washington, D.C. — agreed with Potter that eradication efforts aren't as effective as authorities say.

Efforts in all 50 states haven't kept marijuana production from increasing tenfold in the past 25 years to 22 million pounds in 2006, according to federal estimates compiled by a researcher from St. Pierre's organization, using statistics from the U.S. Justice Department and other agencies. St. Pierre's group also argues that pot isn't as dangerous as officials contend.

Because production numbers generally are based on eradication figures, it's impossible to know for sure what kind of dent police efforts are making. Shemelya says he thinks they get close to half of what's grown. Potter says it's probably far less.

"There's an old saying," Trooper Holden says. "You plant a third for the law, a third for the thieves and a third for yourself."

This year, federal prosecutors are jettisoning their usual 100-plant threshold — used as a guideline to bring federal cultivation charges — and enacting a "zero-tolerance" policy for violations on federal land, Rapier says.

The idea is to push more growers onto private land, which can be seized.

Shemelya says he believes that marijuana would be on every hillside in Eastern Kentucky if his unit didn't keep it in check.

"You're never going to stop people from growing marijuana," he says. "But the idea is to make it so dad-gummed hard to grow they go to Tennessee or somewhere else."

Kentucky is a special place with special people

Sifting through my favorite hyper-intellectual marijuana legalization blogs, I found a unique post from a fellow Kentuckian. This was discovered amidst a structured, well-reasoned and persuasive discussion board arguing for the decriminalization of bud. His post name is "Crazy Fat Guy" and he is from Cave City, KY:

Legalize it? Hell I thought it was. You mean people actually get locked up for smokin skunk?
I'll be damned!!! Argggg!!!! That pisses me off.
Here you got all those clankity assed robots and clowns running around town but they go after the innocent ones smoking a bowl or two. What about those crazy Chinese guys making defective peter pumps? You don't see them getting their doors knocked down. What a fricking travesty!!
bahahahahahahahahahaha! Leperchauns are kool.


Now that's unbridled spirit. No wonder we Kentuckians can't legally smoke dope in the Bluegrass state...

Wednesday, October 15, 2008

RACK 'EM!

A real cute boy at school introduced me to my new favorite crackhead, Willie. Watch this first:

THEN watch the most frightened white guy ever, as Willie pretends to be a legitimate hiring employer:

I actually almost feel sorry for this guy... as I laugh hysterically at his growing anxiety.