Thank you, Oakland!

Residents of Oakland, California (probably my future home, although now it looks like I may be staying on Maui longer than originally planned) just passed a measure to tax medical marijuana to generate income for the city. Pot advocates hope it's a first step towards legalization.

Read the story on Huffington Post.

Godless Geeks!

This is my favorite atheist web site for geeks! (thank you Richard Dawkins)

Illegal Abortion Barbie

Barbie struggles with one of life's toughest decisions, and the strain shows in her mascara. That hanger isn't for one of Ken's ironed work shirts!

Anorexia Barbie

Oh dear, Barbie! I can see your kneejoints! What are you eating these days, raisins and cigarette butts? What happened to your sex appeal?

Barbie Turns 50!

Hi everyone! In the spirit of good fun and bad taste, I found these hysterical Barbie knockoffs (I'm pretty sure Mattel didn't authorize them) on the net. First off, BARBIE TURNS 50! Wish Barbie a happy birthday, everyone! But not TOO many more!

Veljo Tormis

First of all, today is le quatorze juillet, so HAPPY BASTILLE DAY, French people and francophiles! Joyeux Fete Nationale.

And now something completely different. Part of the reason I like having friends is that they introduce me to all sorts of new things. Their obsessions and interests become mine, and thus I expand and enhance my horizons. My favorite actor, Ben Whishaw (hot), is into this composer, Veljo Tormis (photo above). He says of him, "I'm enjoying this Estonian composer, Veljo Tormis. It's strange choral music based on Baltic folk melodies. It's very intense, pure and hypnotic."

Listen to a clip of this haunting, epic, spectral music here. The song is "Raua needmine / Curse Upon Iron," from the new CD "From the Baltic Coast." Reminds you of something from the soundtrack of Baraka, yeah?

Earth Magic and uncertainty

Walking in to town just now, it was raining and I was getting soaked, which sucked, ‘cause I was carrying my laptop in its bag, and had a job application in my backpack which I knew would be destroyed. Then a big native islander guy named Art (Arthur) picked me up in his truck, just when the rain was coming down hardest, and drove me to Mama’s Fish House. On the way he told me how he likes to go to Little Beach (the naked beach) with a metal detector on Monday mornings ‘cause all the people who were there for the Sunday night festivities (dancing, fire ring, drum circle, etc) leave all sorts of stuff that he finds, like watches, bunches of change. Once two girls had lost the keys to their rental car and were devastated and he asked “what part of the beach were you on” and they showed him and he found their keys with his metal detector and they were overjoyed and offered him anything – money, sex – and he said “How about a smile.” Seemed like a really nice guy, I got that feeling from him (and other native islanders I’ve met here) that I normally associate with Native Americans, of their spiritual earth magic connection, some of them are positively angelic, although they can also be demonic if crossed. As long as you don’t do anything underhanded or malicious, though, you have nothing to worry about. Anyway, I think every time I’ve been picked up hitch-hiking (or just walking) here it’s been by a native person, never by old mistrustful whitey. There’s an odd dichotomy here. You hear about the resentment the natives have for us usurpers (understandably, when you read about what the missionaries did), you see signs reading “Reinstated Hawaiian Government” which means the natives want to take their land back and secede from the U.S. (fine with me...can you do it while I’m on Maui?), and yet I’ve yet to have an interaction even approaching negative with any native person; they’re the ones who give me free rides and answers questions from strangers in a friendly manner and go out of their way to be nice to me, a tall, bottle-blond (bleached my hair a week or two ago...it looks really cute) white boy. What gives? I guess maybe it’s obvious that I’m not “overly privileged” if I’m walking three miles each way every time I leave the house...

12/21/12

Dec. 21st, 2012 better be a big day. Everyone from the ancient Mayans to the Romans to Terence McKenna and Drunvalo Melchizedek (whose occult, sacred geometrical texts I'm currently absorbing) has predicted big things for our planet on that date, 12/12/12. The way I see it, it's going to be a wake-up call either way. Either there's something to this occult apocalyptic endgame stuff, or it's time for us to seriously leave the voodoo shit bhind and evolve into more rational, nonreligious, humanistic beings. (Photo above: flower of life matrix overlaid over something else, from some website I found with a Google search. I include it because I think the Flower of Life emblem will be my next tattoo.)

On a completely unrelated note, I'm reading, and enjoying, Barbara Walters's memoir "Audtion." She had a retarded sister named Jackie. She and her mother both had a phobia of driving and Barbara hasn't driven since her college-graduate days. (This is interesting to me since I'm not a driver either, have never had a license, and find it revealing how much pressure you get from so many different directions to get a license...our culture practically requires it, so I feel a bond with other non-drivers.) She writes memorably of her father, Lou Walters, who started a chain of nightclubs called The Latin Quarter that were very successful.

"The bad thing about my father is that he was, by nature, a gambler," she writes in Audtion. "The good thing about my father is that he was, by nature, a gambler."

ALSO...I just saw "Super Liza" on the Big Gay Sketch Show on Logo, and that shit is FUNNY, yo.

My new conspiracy theory

I think there's a serious possibility Michael Jackson faked his death. Think about it...he was "awash in debt," from what I've read...didn't have the energy to make it through all 50 dates of his comeback tour...he's exactly the kind of weird guy who would do something like that, especially since it would put him alongside Elvis and other pop-rock royalty...it is the ultimate media comeback, in a way, I mean look, the media isn't going to shut up about this for at least another few months. He's back on top. And he's so weird looking it wouldn't be hard to put a fake mannequin or something in a casket and say it was him.

It's possible.

By the way, this is my 100th blog post on this site! Go me.