Pages

Thursday, May 31, 2012

And Now, Our Regularly Scheduled Speed Bump




"Dear Coyote, 


Our records indicate that your cumulative or Wossamotta University grade point average is currently below a 2.0 (1.7 GPA for students who have attempted 30 or fewer credit hours).  This may have occurred as a result of your recent spring 2012 semester grades or because of grades in courses transferred from another college or university.  I regret to inform you that you have been placed on academic probation.

Students placed on academic probation may continue their enrollment at Wossamotta U, but are required to meet with a counselor prior to enrolling for future semesters or making changes to currently scheduled classes. I strongly encourage you to take advantage of this opportunity to discuss any issues that may have contributed to your academic performance and to develop a plan for improvement.

Schedule an appointment to meet with a Wossamotta U counselor on the 2nd floor of the Student Center by calling XXX-XXX-XXXX. It is recommended that you call at your earliest convenience to ensure the availability of classes.

If you are an international student with a WU I-20, you must also contact the International & Immigrant Student Services Office in COM 306.

You will remain on academic probation until both your cumulative and Wossamotta University GPA reach a 2.0 or higher (1.7 or higher for students who have attempted 30 or fewer credit hours).  At that time, you will be removed from probation and returned to academic good standing.  Please note that while on probationary status, failure to achieve a semester GPA of 2.0 or higher will result in suspension from the college.  For more information on academic progress, please review the student handbook on the Wossamotta U website.

We are committed to helping you achieve your educational goals.  Please feel free to contact me at XXX-XXX-XXXX, ext. XXXX if you have any questions or concerns.  We look forward to seeing you next semester.

Sincerely,

Raoul Squayne
Assistant Registrar"




For all that this is most likely just some computer report that got spat out in time to complicate my life, this still means that until I get this SNAFU straightened out I am also ineligible for any federal aid whatsoever.  Just the same, it is my experience that nothing of worth is accomplished without struggle, and not always then.  I therefore take this difficulty as a sign that my chosen major and subsequent plans are in fact worthwhile.


Sometime again,
--Coyote








(Wile E. Coyote and the Roadruner are both (c) Warner Brothers, all rights reserved.)

Wednesday, May 30, 2012

Spring Semester of 2012 in Review


And lo, not only has Winter’s skeletal hand withdrawn fully from the skies, but the birds have returned, the flowers have blossomed, the trees have grown green and full, and the mosquitoes arrange themselves in swarming columns along the roadside, supporting the hungry sky like a vampiric pantheon. 


In short, Kansas summer has at long last arrived.

Vastly different from my time in my old alma mater, Miskatonic U, has been my time at Wossamotta.  

daringscylla:

Not mine.

Ah, good old Miskatonic.  Though my time there was brief and rife with tumult (and not, alas, tumultuous and rife with briefs), I remember it as though it were only a meal ago.  Those tenebrous halls, those carefully-constructed corners. Through those fifth-dimensional archways has many a generation of dedicated scholars walked, slithered, or flown when they were only meant to crawl, on to greater glory and illumination.  How we would gather after we had fed Those Who Dwell Below, hands still damp and hearts still racing, to intone our beloved school song:

Miskatonic, Miskatonic
Tentacles so green
Spawn of Yog-Sothoth, Cthulu,
Other things obscene
We shall honour, we shall conjure
Black and greenish hue
Out of light and into shadow
Miskatonic U.

. . . but forgive me.  I was speaking of Wossamotta.


Mondays last semester were full of Dignified Gibberish.  And while I have never been one for rules, I will say that my studies into medical terminology has caused me to question my stance on allowing doctors to write their own prescriptions.  Never since Doctor Stephen Strange decided to write his own eye chart have I encountered such a collection of nonsensical requirements of tongue and wit.  Sometimes in Greek, sometimes in English.  Sometimes named for its function.  Sometimes for its shape.  And sometimes for someone who had waited all his or her life to know that some parasitic growth would be christened in their honour. 


Were it not for Prof. Deist’s fine lectures – all recorded in case I needed to review – I would probably have eaten my textbook in sheer frustration.  


The last week was the worst: human reproductive organs (yay!), but chased down with a double-fistful haul of pharmaceuticals, instruments, body positions and procedures with no system or style whatsoever.  And all the while the book’s authors pretending this rubbish actually made sense.  It was at this point when I actually lost my patience and threw the book across the room.  Cineradiography?  Very well.  Transesophageal echocardiography?  If you must.  But pruritus vulvae?  For a single vulva?  We’re doing pigeon Latin now?  Seriously?


It was therefore with great satisfaction that I ceremoniously dumped the more than three thousand note cards I had accumulated during this class into the Recycling bin.  Final Grade: A.


Tuesdays were replete with Public Shrieking.  While perhaps three students remained in my Dignified Gibberish class, Public Shrieking had a good eight people left standing.  I do not understand why so many measures seem to be making it harder to attend college; so few people seem to have the constitution for it that it's essentially self-filtering.


Public Shrieking was highly enjoyable.  Prof. Apollo was very passionate about what she taught, and encouraged creativity and passion from her students as well.  Medusa made it through to the end, likewise her young Maedar, who not only returned to class but gave several very good presentations.

The last speech was a group project, based around presenting an imaginary product.  This was my only problem with the class.  In addition to homework, studying, whatever jobs we hold and family we work (or vice versa), must we also try to coordinate with multiple other adults outside of class, who are in the same pickle but with different variables?  Fortunately, Internet to the rescue.  We designed the presentation to be completely modular and managed to put together a magnificent display with only having emailed one another outside of class two or three times.


Our product line was fashionable sap gloves for ladies’ self-defense.  Prof. Apollo particularly liked the spokesperson for our product.  Cruella Deville never looked so good.  Final Grade: A.


Wednesdays were for my Early American History class, a condensed look into the politics and power-hungry land-snatching games the USA’s Founding Fathers played from early colonization through post-Reconstruction.  Okay, there was more than that, but . . . distinctly my favorite class.  Prof. Osiris values comprehension over rote.  She sicced us on each other in Socratic discussions, had us do thesis papers and reports, and the tests always had huge, lovely essay questions at the end.

"Vote for Jackson who can fight, not for Adams who can write!"
--Americans tended to be muffin-heads back then, too.

I had to miss a few classes when I caught a flu, choosing between time in History or time in Alchemy.  Freshman triage.  You have to love it.  But nonetheless, between Prof. Apollo’s lectures, the slides she chose (including period art, to give us a sense of the culture), and the very fine textbooks she used, it was a highly enjoyable course.  If circumstances allowed I would take her later History classes, and I might anyway after I get my degree, just for fun.  Final Grade: A.


Thursdays were my bugbear.  Napoleon had Russian winters.  Xerexes had the Greeks.  Julius Caesar had Asterix and Obelix.  And now, I have had Modern Alchemy and Breaking Bad.


Taking Modern Alchemy was like having to memorize chapters out of a book of card games, with lab being the only time you get to actually examine the cards.  Only some of the cards, though, and only some hands.  And no, you can’t take them home.

The first half of the class wasn’t that bad, though as usual I excelled in the lab portion of the class.  I have a knack for problem solving, and many of the exercises we faced were essentially extensions of algebraic thought.  And I got to learn a new way of problem solving, using conversion factors and significant figures.  So it was even kind of fun at first.

Dragon Poker

But about halfway through the class went from playing Bridge and Whist to playing Dragon Poker, while simultaneously increasing speed and workload.  In other words: organic chemistry.  I don’t know how many times I asked a question to clarify my understanding of the system at hand, only to be told that since this was just an introductory class there just wasn't time to go into that kind of depth.  

Of course, I didn't help matters much when I completely lost track of time (as I sometimes do) and suddenly I had twelve hours to turn in a two-week project.


What the hell.  95% is still an A.

I managed to pad my grade enough that my final exam's score still allowed me to keep my overall grade, if only barely.  It dropped from 84.65% to 80.24%.  But I kept it just the same, and it was with satisfaction equal to that of those damned note cards that I recycled my plastic lab goggles.  Final Grade: B.


So, after more than twenty years away from campus life, here’s the final score.

Dignified Gibberish (or: “What Ancient Greeks Called That Thing That Hangs Down at the Back of Your Throat”): A.

Public Shrieking (or: “Never Let Them See You Sweat”): A.

Early American History (or: “Why White People Suck”): A.

Modern Alchemy and Breaking Bad (or, “Why Can’t Johnny Blink?”): B.

Overall GPA: 3.65 (Modern Alchemy was a five-credit class).


So I'm taking the summer off now, thank you, and back into the salt mines in the fall.  My next post should be up Friday as usual.  Until then this is Coyote saying, “If you can’t frighten them off with a show of teeth, then strangle them with your tongue.”

Sometime Again,
--Coyote.




(Anakin Skywalker (c) Lucasfilms as everyone knows, but I have no idea who the lovely lady on top of him is; Miskatonic University was created by the late great Howard Philip Lovecraft a long time ago but the Cthulhu picture is courtesy of the-audient-void.tumblr.com and in any event, all relevant rights reserved by original creators; "seriously?" coyote pic courtesy of relentlesslyoptomistic.com, all rights reserved, say thank ye; the book sandwich is courtesy of bookpatrol.net but started out as a McDonalds ad in Hungary; the "speech" diagram is courtesy of sixminutes.dlugan.com; Cruella deVille is (c) Disney all rights reserved; the Dragon Poker pic is courtesy card-games-online.com in reference to the game inferred / created by Bob Asprin; and Wile E. Coyote and the Road Runner are of course (c) Warner Brothers, thankee-sai to Mel Blanc for giving him the perfect voice.)

Friday, May 25, 2012

Gazette Delayed

Now that I am done wandering aimless and unfed through the unholy wilderness known as Finals Week, I have been helping my Magnificent Offspring catch up with their studies and take their own finals.  This has been their last week, and today is their last day.  Since they attend an online school, I've been busy coaching, proctoring, and generally attending the usual requirement of scholastic mayhem.

So it is that I will not have my usual update today.  Today's post will therefore be up this coming Wednesday, with the next post being available the following Friday as usual.

My thank to everyone for their patience, and see you Wednesday.

--Coyote

Thursday, May 17, 2012

Road Atlases

I saw him again on the highway.  He stuck his thumb out in a futile gesture, just going through the motions, knowing damn good and well that no one was going to stop for his tired, weathered ass.

So of course I stopped.

I’d seen him last maybe twenty minutes before, tired and sun-dried on the road near the Sun Fresh Market.  He’d had the look of someone who’d been on the road with no end in sight: back bent from carrying his pack, hat looking like it had been through a stampede but still keeping the sun out of his eyes, his shades helping it to save his sight from years of hard road glare.  Always looking down, just one foot in front of the other, unless maybe there was a ride in the offing.

Most hitchhikers, when you stop for them, will run.  They know that anybody with a car thinks they’re in a hurry, and gods forbid that some jackass without a ride makes them wait another thirty seconds.  Anybody who speeds through a yellow light or guns it through a red one doesn’t want to wait on some bum carrying the world on his back.

Of course, some people will just pretend to stop, so they can watch them make that thank-god-I’m-not walking-anymore dash and then take off again.  If the hitcher is desperate enough, you might be able to make them sprint a couple of times, let them think maybe it was a mistake, before flooring it and leaving them coughing in the exhaust and wincing away from the gravel.  It’s rare, of course.  Even having a car stop isn’t too common.  But it happens.

I’ll almost always stop for a hitchhiking woman, though not for the reasons you might think.  Throughout the world, to varying degrees, a woman on the road carries her life in her hands, and sees it in the fists of almost any passerby.  I’ll pick up a woman on the street simply because then I know she’s with someone who won’t expect anything in return, let alone think he’s entitled and take what isn’t offered.

But I never saw many women walking the road when I was younger, and they’re almost gone now.  Too many rapes, too many serial killers.  Today’s whisky-girl is either with someone, or she stays on the side roads, away from traffic and the Father Dowling who could be Ed Kemper in disguise.  If you’re a lady of the road, civilization is the Dunwitch Horror and it will absolutely gobble you up.  It’s just safer and cleaner to stay where the Wild Things are.

Of course, there’s the other side of it, too.  Any hitchhiker could be a carjacker with a gun, which is why women drivers generally won’t stop.  All the world over, women are seen as victims, and it’s been a self-fulfilling prophesy for thousands of years.  Being large and male does give me certain luxuries.  I’m also faster than I look, and I always make sure a hitcher is beside me, never behind.  I’ll play the gentleman, no mistake.  But they’ll always be in reach, and I am comfortable with violence.  Besides, life is nothing without some risk.

This fellow was an old man, bearded white, somewhere between twenty-six and sixty.  Time on the road had done its work: skin tanned into old leather stretched tightly over bone and sinew, pitted lower incisors, a back like a croquet wicket.  I’d mentioned that most hitchers ran.  He walked.  He was too tired for anything else. 


Like I said, he’d done this for a while.  He knew enough to get in with his bag in his hand, “Thanks, Brother,” then ask if he could pass it into the back seat.  If the bag goes in first, once again, the driver may just floor it, laughing, and leave the would-be hitcher with no food, shelter, money, or recourse.  People talk about how poverty breeds desperation and crime, and it does.  But they forget that wealth gives people the leisure for casual cruelty.  Often times, the difference between a knight of the road and a beggar in the mud is his pack.  So I helped the old Atlas stow his planet in back, and asked him where he was headed.

“South, brother,” he said.  “Way South.”

I was heading that way myself, and allowed I could get him as far as the college, which would be a good ten miles jump for him, easy.  He gave me his name, and as we shook I gave him mine.

“No way!”  He laughed.  “My old CB handle was Coyote!  That is too cool.”

So we two Coyotes laughed together and talked awhile as we headed South on I-35, looking for a truck stop where he could rest, wash, and start the next leg of his journey.

Mostly he talked, and mostly I listened.  Part of that was because he was getting hard of hearing, and it was just easier that way.  Part of it was that he hadn’t had anyone listen to him in a long time, and he needed someone to talk to.  That sat well with me.

He said he spent his winters in Texas helping with the horses on a ranch, and he had the walk to prove it.  He was short on supplies, since he’d been robbed not long ago at a truck stop.  He’d left his pack in the main room while he bathed, and someone with a car just took it.  He hadn’t been able to brush his teeth in two weeks.

We stopped off at a drugstore and picked him up some cheap supplies, and he continued his tale.  He was fifty-seven years old.  He was headed to Wichita to stay with some friends for a few days, then light out again to Ohio.  Seems his father was there, dying, and probably going to live just long enough to lose his house.
“I mean, he built that house,” the other Coyote said.  “Him and his uncles and a neighbor.  I mean, hell, I was hammerin’ nails when I was five, you know?  And now the goddamn government’s taking it all away.  And he’s a veteran, he landed in Omaha!  He fought for you, he fought for me.  And now . . .” 

He trailed off, looking out at the passing scenery before he went on, more calm.  “I ain’t never voted, you know?  Don’t believe in it.  Who you gonna vote for, this liar or that liar?  This thief or that thief?  I’d burn it,” He looked at me with new intensity.  “I’d set it on fire, the whole fuckin’ thing, before I’d let them have it!  Nothin’ but ashes, man.”  He looked out the window again.  “Nothin’ but fuckin’ ashes.  Let ‘em take that.”  And he was quiet for a long while after.

I nodded.  I’d read a story long ago about a boy who had a pet frog he loved more than anything.  The neighborhood bullies had cornered him and his pet on a rooftop, ready to take it from him and smash it in front of him.  So the boy threw it off the rooftop himself, to its death, rather than let them kill it.  When surrounded by superior forces, sometimes destruction is the only physical freedom left to you.

I took my fellow Coyote further out of my way than I let on, dropped him off at a McDonald’s with a couple of bucks for food.  He didn’t like taking it, but he liked staying hungry even less.  Sometimes I think about hitting the road myself, carrying my own world on my back and just dropping off the grid entirely.  Getting away from the people, the forms, the noise, the basic wrongness of civilization.  Maybe I’d wander for months, maybe for years.  Just take off, and see the world one step at a time.  But ultimately, you will notice, I am still here.

--Coyote.











(Bottom Atlas picture courtesy of dangerouscreation.com, all rights reserved by original creator.)

Friday, May 11, 2012

Madness



(This is an edited-for-reading version of the last speech I gave in my Public Shrieking class.  I had considered lecturing in favor of legalizing gay marriage, but ultimately determined that I would be better off with a topic about which I would be less likely to rant and froth at the mouth.  Ultimately my speech was very well received, by my fellow students and by Prof. Apollo herself.  She said it was the best I had done to date, which was very kind of her.  But it's always easier to be convincing when it's something you're genuinely passionate about.  Except for the frothing part, I mean.)






I grew up in a house with an open door. 

When we bothered to set places at the table at all, there was always extra for the Unexpected Guest, just in case.  There is a tradition in my family – one that I broke with when I started having daughters – of taking in whoever is in need and helping them get back on their feet.  Rarely did I see the time when we did not have guests in the house, sometimes for a week or two, sometimes for years.  I had a lot of adoptive older brothers and sisters, and yes, we got ripped off, too.  But it was a vital part of my education, and occasionally I wish that circumstances had allowed me to share it with my own children.

Addicts, homeless, runaways, escapees from some bad situation at home or some poor chicken who found out the hard way that even KC can be a big city when it feels the urge.  I saw a lot of mean addictions, people hooked on drugs, sex, religion, money, alcohol, politics, or even their own sense of failure.  There were a lot of heavy trips, too, from the young gigglers making out on a couch to the poor girl whose date slipped her LSD at a party, told her he was the Devil and had come for her soul.  He ended up locking her in a closet, lights off, her head full of Boyfriend’s acid and Daddy’s Anti-Christ.

And, of course, there were the withdrawal cases, the DTs that might have my foster brothers and sisters sweating, snapping, fighting, freaking, or just snorting Polo cologne from the cap sometime ‘round the midnight hour.

But I never, ever, saw anything bad come from marijuana.  In all the years I spent growing up surrounded by the best and worst poster children for Bad Habits Inc. and all its subsidiaries, I never, not once, saw cannabis act as an addictive substance in and of itself, nor as a gateway drug of any kind.  I never saw anyone go through bad withdrawal from giving up pot, and I never saw any harm come from a marijuana OD.


Please understand: I don’t smoke the reefer.  I’ve never tried cannabis, and I probably never will.  It’s just not my thing.  In addition, I have seen, not just the parties, but their aftermath, time and time again throughout my life.  Which means that I have observed the cannabis situation, inside and out, from as close to an unbiased point of view as you can get.  So when I say that marijuana should be legal, I speak as someone with absolutely no personal gain in the matter.

And marijuana should most definitely be legal.  Its classification as a controlled substance is a symptom of the blind, unthinking hysteria that has pervaded American culture for far too long.  The history of its illegalization is steeped in greed, racism, and racketeering.  And the time to end this madness is long overdue.

I ran an anonymous survey recently, as part of my classes at good old Wotsamotta U.  I quizzed classmates and people in my own neighborhood, no one too close to me personally.  Of those surveyed, 80% had tried cannabis at least once.  70% imbibed on at least a “sometimes” basis, 50% regularly.  And no one, not even the 20% who had never tried it, answered “yes” when asked if they would turn in a friend or family member for using the illegal drug.

Which means that almost everyone surveyed secretly breaks this law.  And if you know one of those lawbreakers, or used to know them, and you did not report them immediately to the police . . .


Under current law, we are all criminals.

But how is this possible?  If marijuana is so great, why is it illegal in the first place?  At what point could a law be passed to transform literally millions Americans, otherwise considering themselves upright and law-abiding, into habitual, hardened criminals? 

To better understand the answer to that question, let us take a brief look at the effects and risks of cannabis as a drug, regarding both health and society.

First of all, Marijuana is not a harmful substance in and of itself.  In his book, simply titled The Herb Book, John Lust identified the active chemical behind marijuana’s high as THC, or tetrahydrocannabinol.  This chemical can cause relaxation, fatigue, alteration of the senses, and of course, appetite stimulation.  As such, it has been used by humankind for centuries, some say for thousands of years.

There is no way to be sure how many people use cannabis, or marijuana, in the US today.  Most users know they are doing so illegally, and are understandably reluctant to offer themselves up.  And as any census taker will have their own agenda.  The more money and politics are involved the more their statistics will be twisted around to their own ends.  But almost everyone knows someone who has smoked marijuana at least once.  It bears repeating.  We are all criminals here.

In 1995, the Lancet, one of the most recognized and respected journals of medicine for over a hundred years, published the following conclusion: "The smoking of cannabis, even long-term, is not harmful to health."    

In 1998, three years later, the Lancet acknowledged that there are technically dangers in marijuana use, primarily accidents while intoxicated and possible cognitive impairment with heavy, long-term use.  In this, however, it remains, “It would be reasonable to judge cannabis less of a threat to health than alcohol or tobacco, products that in many countries are not only tolerated and advertised but are also a useful source of tax revenue.”

Approximately 50,000 people die each year from alcohol poisoning. Over 400,000 deaths can be linked to tobacco smoking each year.   By comparison, if a person overdoses on marijuana, they eat a peanut-butter – banana-crunch burrito and sleep for two days.      


But cannabis, or marijuana, isn’t just a recreational drug.  It has been proven to have positive effects regarding pain – including pain from nerve damage – eyesight, and, of course, stress.  It is also a powerful appetite stimulant, especially for those suffering from AIDS and from organ failure.  Manufactured pharmaceuticals often have detrimental, even hospitalizing side effects.  Cannabis does not.  But being a black market drug means that not only is it prohibitively expensive, its supply is also unreliable. 

Small wonder, then, that according to the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws, or NORML, “. . . more than 60 U.S. and international health organizations support granting patients immediate legal access to medicinal marijuana under a physician's supervision.”

Here are just a few of them:

AIDS Action Council
Aids Treatment News
American Nurses Association
American Preventative Medical Association
American Public Health Association
American Society of Addiction Medicine
The Montel Williams MS Foundation
Multiple Sclerosis Society (Canada)
The Multiple Sclerosis Society (UK)
National Association for Public Health Policy
National Nurses on Addictions

This is not to say, of course, that there are no risks . . .




Prosecution of marijuana has gone up and down a lot in recent decades, but the trend is definitely an upward one. 


In 1965, an average of two people were arrested for cannabis-related charges every hour.  By 2010, that number had gone up to an average of 97.5.  In 2005, more than 786, 000 people were arrested in this country for marijuana-related offenses alone.  That’s more arrests than there are people living in Kansas City Missouri, and since then it’s gone up.

As an aside, the cost to the taxpayers for monitoring, arrest, trial, conviction, and incarceration for marijuana criminals is estimated at about $10 billion per year.  All for a drug that, when not cut with chemicals, has no major side effects, is not toxic, is not addictive, and has some major medical benefits.

And, of course, there are crime risks.  Much like in prohibition, when something becomes illegal, the gangs get involved.


I met a man in Topeka who made his living as a pot courier.  He decided to retire, but he made the mistake of staying in town.  He was dead in six months.

While most casual buyers aren’t dealing with quite that level of risk, it is there.  Sometimes, there is the risk of getting marijuana laced with toxic chemicals.  But most often, there is the risk that one of your contacts will get arrested, and then give the police your name to get a lighter sentence.

So long as cannabis is a controlled substance, those who cannot obtain it legally will have to deal with the crime elements to obtain it.  And that means risking having the substance cut with poisons, being arrested, or even just having their physical safety threatened.  All this for something anyone could grow in their own back yard if it were not illegal.

So, now that we have seen the benefits and the basic harmlessness of cannabis itself, the question remains: how did we end up with this level of hysteria?  How did the institution of marijuana’s illegality come to be so well entrenched?  If cannabis isn’t bad, as indeed it is not, how did the American public ever come to fear it in the first place?

The simplest explanation, the most pivotal, happens to be from Abbie Hoffman’s book, Steal This Urine Test.  According to Abbie Hoffman, the blame lies with a man named Harry J. Anslinger.  Mr. Anslinger was the Assistant Prohibition Commissioner in the Bureau of Prohibition.  Which means when prohibition started winding down, he was in danger of losing money, power, and influence.  He was also, as many were at the time, a racist.

Harry Anslinger started putting out pamphlets and newsletters about the evils of certain drugs, including cocaine and cannabis – or, as he called it, marijuana.  Each drug was associated with at least one racial stereotype, and played on racist fears.

Marijuana was the drug Anslinger chose to be the drug of the black man.  He claimed it was highly, instantly addictive, and was the herald of society’s utter destruction. 

He wrote police-styled “reports” of how otherwise fine young white men would be found in their blood-spattered houses, wandering dazed, axe in hand, the mutilated corpses of their loved ones surrounding them.  He published findings of black men losing their minds and raping white women, destroying their lives forever.  All this horror, he maintained, because of marijuana.


In 1929, he was quoted as stating, “Marijuana makes darkies think they are as good as white men.”  This in and of itself was enough to stir the fear and hatred he needed.  But it was later, in 1937, he revealed the real fear behind the anti-cannabis movement: sexually free women and inter-racial sex.    


By that time he was just keeping the ball rolling, though.  On June 14, 1930, Harry Anslinger was appointed the first commissioner of the newly-formed Federal Bureau of Narcotics.  Now his power was secure.  And we have been living with the aftershocks of the fear that he instilled, and the bureaucratic machine that has grown up around it, ever since.

Marijuana is not, and never was, a threat to any individual or group.

In conclusion, the continued treatment of cannabis as a controlled substance is like a very bad joke that history has played at our expense.  Cannabis, or marijuana, is not harmful.  Besides being a popular recreational drug, it has multiple medical uses.  The history of its illegalization is steeped in greed, racism, and racketeering.  By making it freely available for anyone, the sick and chronically ill will be able to treat themselves, responsible adults will be able to use it recreationally (much like with alcohol), and the kids of the nation will be able to experiment without fear of arrest, poison or gang violence.



Visit NORML.ORG for more information on cannabis and how you can help free everyone from this madness.

--Coyote.




(Images of Al Capone and the St. Valentine's Day Massacre courtesy of tripod.com.  Image of a beautiful sleeping woman courtesy of news.com.au.  All rights reserved by their rightful holders, if any or at all.)

Tuesday, May 1, 2012

Due to the gods of Wossamotta U smiting me upon the altar of their dread lord "Nollij," there will be no post this week.  Next week's post should appear at the usual time.

Sometime again,
--Coyote