Tallahassee and Grabbag - D. Puckis Reporting

Grabbag returns to Tallahassee this weekend for an afternoon backyard party with the FAKE LIFE crew. It’s been a couple of years since we’ve been to Tallahassee and it’s been even more years since Scooter and I lived there for a year. I wonder if the memories of Leon County Jail still reverberate in Scooter’s mind. After the cops drove him away, I called the jail all night until they finally told me they set bail at $500. I had that shit raised up by 8 AM, thanks to Rico and DJ Blaze. The three of us hopped in the DDT car (1980s Chevy Celebrity with big gangster letters in the rear window, a total cop magnet) and rode on down to the lock-up. I started waiving the money in the cops’ face and demanding Scooter’s release. They balked. They disappeared. Then they just let old Scooter out without bail. He looked pretty rough. We got home and he slept for the rest of the day.

I’m glad we’re coming back to Tallahassee. Maybe for old time’s sake we’ll pack Black & Milds with bud and smoke while walking down Tennessee Street between the Winn Dixie and TCC. One time I was doing just that when I saw a homeless dude run out of the Winn Dixie with a shopping cart full of pilfered booze. He was already across the street and around a corner by the time a manager and a teenage bag boy ran out after him. They got to the end of the parking lot, where I was standing, then they stopped. I heard the manager say to the bag boy, “He did the same thing yesterday.”

Do we still have friends in Tallahassee? If so, I’d love to see them at the FAKE LIFE party on Saturday. There is a certain ex-Grabbag member that still calls Tallahassee home, I believe. I doubt he’ll show, unless someone tells him there will be teenage girls there. Then he will fill an empty bottle of Dom with Boone’s Farm and sport a giant Donald Duck shirt and show up for the let out.

D. Puckis

Slam! by Walter Dean Myers

Genre:  Sports/Realistic Fiction

# of Pages:  266

RAC:  Yes

Slam is called Slam for a reason.  He can dunk a basketball right in the face of stiff competition.  When he is moved to a new school he has some trouble adjusting.  First, he is now separated from his friends, including his best friend, Ice.  He also has to focus on his grades because if they slip too much he won’t be eligible to play basketball, which is his favorite thing in the world to do.  His new school is much more difficult, so he is having trouble keeping up.  Plus, his coach and some of his teachers think he has an attitude problem, which does not help matters.  As Slam tries to deal with the many aspects of his life there always seems to be a new distraction to get in the way.  Friends from his old school try to convince him that Ice may be into something bad since he has a lot of money to burn all of a sudden.  Slam doesn’t want to see that Ice may be dealing drugs because he knows it could be the end of their friendship.  At the same time all of this is going on, Slam is fighting to get a place on the school basketball team.  Will he ever feel like he has some control over his life?

Fans of Walter Dean Myers will like this book as well.  Slam is a likable character with a lot of difficult, yet believable things going on in his life.  Many teenagers will be able to relate to dealing with friends, school, sports, and family at the same time.  Myers also weaves exciting sports action throughout the story which will make sports fans happy.  Most readers will wish that the story was longer just so they can follow Slam as he navigates through all the different people in his life for longer.  Teenage boys will be reaching for this one.

Realization

I remember feeling happy, and I remember the day I felt the corporeal happiness in me leave my body. I looked at the world on a whole, and it’s not that anyone deserves to be happy, and it’s not that anyone deserves to feel pain, it’s just a fact some of us do, and some of us don’t. There is no such thing as karma.I feel like the older you get, the less ignorance you hold(in which case if you’re just a fucking idiot, your happiness is accounted for), and the world can seem really bleak without that candy coat. I also think that just means you have to be really creative to capture moments of happiness.

Once you stop trying to cling to finding old feelings again, it’s really liberating. I hope that in the loss of old happiness, new happiness might grow. I don’t know what it would feel like, and I don’t like new things, but recapturing a moment, sometimes ruins it entirely.

My psych teacher brought up a fleeting point that people with IBS/and or cutting may also suffer from Borderline Personality Disorder. However I’ve met many other people who have IBS and they deal with it a lot better than I do, and it is an extremely small association to BPD, but it seems to fit for me. I think knowing that helps me stop myself from being desperate.

I’ve started meditating. It’s done little thus far, but I see room for improvement, it’s hard because I am very jittery. I’m also painting again. All this said, I have never been more sure, happiness is something that happens to some people, and sadness is something that happens to all people.

Speeding Cars by Imogean Heap reminds me of when I lost feeling happy. I think I’ll be ok with this next chapter though. I’m saving up my money to go India over the summer, which my parent’s said they would pay for it(bc it’s with a volunteer group) but I kind of want to pay for it myself. I feel inspired painting-wise, and the ideas I’m having are less like my other ones and they seem worth exploring. I’m excited to see how this will fuel my paintings.

Wasted

Of all the moronic things this government have done about drugs this seems to take the cake.  They hire a committee to investigate the “relative harm” of drugs, the committee promptly does as it is told and when it makes its report, the government does the complete opposite of what the committee recommends, i.e. upgrading cannabis to a class B drug (the committee said it should stay class C) and leaving ecstasy and MDMA as class A (the committee recommended downgrading them).  This must be pretty insulting to a group of scientists who spent months researching for the government, only to have their research thrown back in their face.  Then, when their chair Prof. Nutt stands up for their research, the Home Secretary sacks him.

True, Prof. Nut has been rather outspoken in his criticism of the current classification of drugs.  He said alcohol and tobacco are more harmful than cannabis.  In terms of damage done to society his is absolutely right.  You don’t have to be a scientist to see our hospitals are crammed full of people with injuries picked up in drunken fights or comatose from alcohol poisoning.  To say otherwise makes you a god-damn liar, but I guess the words “politician” and “liar” are pretty interchangeable.

Alan Johnson is no question an arrogant idiot – it is the prerequisit of holding the position of Home Secretary these days (David Go-Back-Where-They-Came-From Blunkett, Charles I’m-Sorry-I-Havn’t-A-Clue Clarke, Jacqui Porno Smith) but it seems to me this whole idea of arguing over which drugs are worse is, in itself, pretty stupid.  To borrow that word again, it’s all “relative.”

Consider these cases: Somebody who has a hit on a bong at a party is harming themself and society less than a raging alcoholic, yet the cannabis user is committing the crime.  However, a person who enjoys an occasional glass of wine with a meal is doing much less harm to themselves than somebody who sits at home every single night smoking weed – which, incidentally, nearly everybody mixes with tobacco (don’t tell me THAT’S a harmless drug).

Our entire system of classifying drugs according to relative harm is pointless since no two people abuse substances in the same way.  Of course, nobody will point this out to the government now as telling anything verging on the truth about drugs appears to get you sacked.

I Don't Like the Drug (Laws) But the Drug (Laws) Like Me...

 

“Drugs are less about getting high, and more about making huge pots of money. As for risk, it is possible to fit enough heroin to supply this country for a year in the back of a cube van; a year’s supply of cocaine will fit in a shipping container.

…

[Eugene] Oscapella said, “If you’re a mom-and-pop producer of marijuana, mandatory minimums will scare you out of business.” Yeah, so? “Organized crime will step in; the government has moved the competition out of the way.”

This is an unintended consequence of the worst kind: Banning a substance makes it wildly lucrative; punishing the small fry makes it easier for the bad guys to do business.”

- Joe Fiorito discussing why potential new ‘tougher’ drug laws won’t work in Canada (or anywhere else for that matter).

Drugs | The Nutty Professor vs The Govt.

So let’s consider the facts. Dude, aka Professor Nutt (yes the universe has a sense of irony), thinks that the government are not being as honest as they should be on drugs policy. In steps Alan Johnson the Home Secretary who sacks Nutty Professor (sorry couldn’t help it) for stepping over the line when he more or less stated that science should not be ignored when defining policy.  To be fair he did make some crass comparison between deaths from ecstasy compared to horse riding.

My Opinion
I think before I take this further I should state my claim. I am concerned about the legalisation of drugs like cocaine, heroin or marijuana. I am also concerned about the harm done by any kinds of drugs to people. However if it reduces criminality and the harm done to people then I am all for legalisation. I think if more harmful, and this is my opinion, drugs and tobacco are legal and taxable then there is no reason why the same shouldn’t be done for marijuana. This is purely on a harm prevention and non moral basis. The horse has already bolted so there is no point pretending like it will go away.

Intellect vs Emotion
The thing is this, as with any sensitive subject often emotion comes to the fore. As a trained Drug Prevention Educator I have seen first hand the effects both in schools and the community the affects of psychosis from drug use. I have read stories and heard first hand accounts of people who have vigorously opposed the use of drugs classed A to C. Families who have lost loved ones mentally or physically because of tainted or modified drugs such as skunk or ‘high grade’ to use the street vernacular.

In light of this however these deaths and injuries pale in comparison to the damage being done by the legal alcohol and tobacco use. The science suggests, depending on which research you buy into, that more harm is done through tobacco than marijuana and thus this should influence policy.

Now without delving deeply into this argument (for another post) if you do have research that can influence classification of a drug and thus reduce harm surely this should trump emotion. Unfortunately such is the nature of politics that this issue will be clouded. Given that the Nutty Professor (a gentle title for this blog, no offence intended) should come of his high horse and not think he has all the answers I do think he has a real point that we miss the bigger picture if it’s just about votes.

Public school nurses give swine flu vaccine to kids without parents' OK, sends child to hospital

Here’s an expample of government run health care:

The Daily News Reports:

School nurses mistakenly gave the swine flu vaccine to two students who didn’t sign up for it – including a Brooklyn girl with epilepsy who wound up in the hospital.

“I was outraged,” Naomi Troy, 26, told the Daily News after her 6-year-old daughter, Nikiyah Torres-Pierre, had a possible allergic reaction to the shot.

Officials at Public School 335 in Crown Heights called an ambulance to take Nikiyah to SUNY Downstate Medical Center when she fell ill following the arm jab.

Read more here

The Nurses Union blames the city for this bungle:

Officials admitted on Friday that a third student was mistakenly given the swine flu vaccine – an error the school nurses union blamed on the city.

“Nurses are not getting the support they need,” said Judith Arroyo, president of Local 436, District Council 37, adding that the union had warned of problems.

“We don’t like it when we’re right, because usually when we’re right someone does get hurt somewhere along the way.”

City officials countered that nurses have received “excellent support.”

More here