The Philter

Maybe I’m a little cranky today, but something I just read has me fuming like Lewis Black. Check this chain of events: California in particular, and the U.S. a whole, are finally coming around to the idea of decriminalizing marijuana, with medical use acting as the wedge just like everybody said it would. For the most part I fully support this idea, though I worry a) that our youth will damage their brain cells with cheap, readily available cheeba and b) that having it be legal will take all the fun out of it for them.

Taking advantage of this change in the general attitude toward the ganja, my beloved city of Oakland has been one of the more aggressive cities in licensing and taxing growers, and is getting even more so in anticipation of de facto legalization being passed by voters in November. Again, this is a good thing. People like to get high and they like to drink, and I think people on the right and the left can agree at this point that it’s not government’s business to stop them. What government can do is regulate the business and scoop some money off the top to support services that people need.

Here’s the part that bugs me: Oakland is licensing four colossal indoor growing facilities. As pointed out by the faithful East Bay Express, the massive amounts of energy required to grow tons of cannabis indoors will not only put a major strain on our electrical grid, but release large amounts of carbon into the atmosphere. This comes just as the U.S. experienced its hottest month in recorded history in July 2010.

So here is what we are doing, fellow humans: exacerbating an already risky global-warming situation to grow a plant that isn’t even food and could just as easily be grown with free and abundant sunlight. Why? What the hell is wrong with us? I refer you back to the headline.

Here’s the rest of that story about the Hell’s Angels, the puppy, and the bulldozer. (Note to self: great idea for children’s book!) Unfortunately, it leaves a lot if questions unanswered:

German police said on Monday that after making his getaway from the Hell’s Angels club, the 26-year-old dumped the bulldozer, causing a 5 km (3 miles) traffic jam near the southern town of Allershausen, local police said. He then fled to his home nearby where he was apprehended by the police.

“What motivated him to throw a puppy at the Hell’s Angels is currently unclear,” said a spokesman for local police, adding that the student had lately been suffering from depression.

The puppy was now in safe hands, the spokesman added.

(Reporting by Max Chrambach, editing by Paul Casciato)

The best line is “”What motivated him to throw a puppy at the Hell’s Angels is currently unclear.” So marvelously deadpan, and if you imagine it being said with a German accent, it’s even better.

For a while now I’ve been getting Reuters’ Oddly Enough emails, which give me one-paragraph summaries of the day’s strangest news stories. Sometimes I click through to read the whole story; but this one is so great as is, I almost don’t want to know the details:

June 15, 2010 10:55 AM ET
BERLIN (Reuters) – A German student created a major traffic jam in Bavaria after making a rude gesture at a group of Hell’s Angels motorcycle gang members, hurling a puppy at them and then escaping on a stolen bulldozer.

In the course of conducting my (perfectly innocent, I swear) affairs today, I happened to come across the Web site for something called the “World Toilet Organization.” I am not making this up and as far as I can tell it is a real thing, either that or a very elaborate and staggeringly deadpan hoax. As a favor to me I’d like for you to peruse their site, read about World Toilet College, World Toilet Day, and the World Toilet Summit, and let me know via comment which you think it is. Your assistance is appreciated.

Today marked the return of my favorite cat site, Baby’s No Help, a single-minded project devoted to chronicling the adventures of one complicated cat and her friends. The cat in question, Oakland’s own Baby, is an especially devoted guardian of Earth and its inhabitants.

Not everyone appreciates the work that cats do in protecting us all from the trans-dimensional creatures (TDCs) that pose a constant threat to our way of life. In fact many of us remain blissfully unaware of the threat and of the fact that, without the constant vigilance of our feline defenders, the TDCs would wreak havoc on our dimension. No one is sure exactly what they would do, and Osiris willing, we will never find out; but without a doubt it would be terrible indeed.

Now you may be saying, “But wait, my cat sleeps upwards of 20 hours a day. What kind of protection is he or she against anything?” Well, the fact is that the TDCs appear on our plane of reality only rarely, often in the middle of the night, local time. Thus it is vitally important that the cats are well-rested at all times, so that they may respond swiftly and decisively when the moment comes. There is some kind of circuit in the feline brain that warns them when the dimensional barrier is breached (it is particularly strong in female cats for some reason), and this is why even a cat who seems to be wrapped in the deepest reaches of slumber may suddenly come alert, looking this way and that at what appears to be nothing at all.

This is also why cats feel entitled to anything they want to eat, the warmest places to sleep in, and as many hours of uninterrupted repose as they care to enjoy. So the next time you see a sleeping cat, by all means do not disturb it; instead lean over and whisper your thanks quietly in its ear. It may appear entirely oblivious, and may well be so, but rest assured the message will get through somehow.

From a horrible news story:

Defense attorney Jeff Deen said his client admits putting his wife’s body in the freezer, but he doesn’t know how she died.

The love that cannot speak its name.

Over the years I’ve had numerous crushes on women who are, to varying degrees, less than real. For the most part, these fall into two categories: sitcom characters (Bailey Quarters, Elaine Nardo, Lisa from NewsRadio, Pam from The Office) and movie stars (Marilyn, Jessica Alba, Drew Barrymore, Scarlett Johansson). The nature of TV is such that one tends to conflate the actress with the character, and I’m not sure if that makes the crush object more or less real than a movie star, who has the name of an actual person but is experienced as a series of identities that change from film to film. And I’m not sure how you categorize feelings one might have for the image of someone who died before you were even born (technically speaking, that does fit the definition of necrophilia).

I also have a strange, longstanding attachment to the character Trillian from The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, who started out as the smart, sexy, and I’m pretty sure brunette voice of Susan Sheridan in the BBC radio series, became a literary character for many years, morphed briefly into a blonde bimbo for the TV series, then turned into Zooey Deschanel in the movie—which was doubly confusing, because I like Zooey Deschanel very much, but I hated that movie.
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And just like that, it’s over: 5 years, 500 posts, 533 comments. Given how much I wrote in the first year, that means I’ve been awfully lazy in the last few; but that’s OK, because at least I’ve written more than nothing, and that’s something, right?

A few notes and updates:

• Almost five years after I first wrote about him, Abe Vigoda—against all rational likelihood—remains alive. In fact he seems to be getting better; he even appeared in this ad broadcast during the most recent Super Bowl:

• The mural on the side of the former Dave’s Coffee Shop has been repainted and looks more or less as it did before, with the same Gandhi quote in big bold letters. This gladdens my heart.

• I correctly predicted that the Easy Star All-Stars would record a version of Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, though in retrospect I wish I’d correctly predicted they’d cover Abbey Road or the White Album. To test the strength of these powers, I’m now going to predict that their next project will be The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardub and the Spiders from Mars.

Which brings us right back, again, to David Bowie, who I’ve written about probably more than anyone. In the future I think that Bowieism will be recognized as a viable religious option, probably after the great man himself passes on to the next Bardo, assuming he ever does. It’s possible David, Lou, and Iggy will be granted eternal life by the aliens when they land in 2012, having travelled many light years to follow up on that Chuck Berry we sent them a while back.

In the news today, this guy attempted to board a plane in Pakistan with “electrical circuits in his shoes“:

And I’m sorry, but I have to ask: what the hell does he have in his beard?

So here we are: It’s May 10, 2010. (5/10/10: nice neat numbers, those.) The big 5th blogiversary is tomorrow. The comments stand at 529 (thanks to everybody who pitched in, this part went much better than I expected), with the number of entries lagging sadly behind at 494. So what do I do? Post every thought I have today, Twitter-style, to try and get the number up? Fudge the math and hope nobody notices (which nobody will, especially if I delete this entry before anybody reads it)? Or just forget about the numbers and be happy with what I’ve got? I haven’t made up my mind yet; I guess we’ll see what happens.