The northlondonhippy

Archive for February, 2007

When I was a kid, several decades ago, expectations of the end of the world were simple and directly related to the nuclear arms build-up between America and the Soviet Union. The planet was going to be incinerated in an orgiastic exchange of h-bombs. The concept was called mutually assured destruction or MAD as it was known at the time.

It still could happen, but probably sparked off by one of the later members of the nuclear club, or even more likely, if some crazy terrorist group gets their grubby little hands on one.

Hey ho!

But now, added to that list of cataclysmic horror is climate change and that’s even scarier simply because of its apparent inevitability. This is one runway train that can’t be stopped!

At least we’ll all go with a deep, dark, tropical tan…even the polar bears! What fun!

One way or another, the end of the world will come, but my guess is it won’t happen until our sun goes supernova, in a billion years or so. Until then, the planet will most likely still be here.

So what do we really mean by the “end of the world”? What we really mean is the end of us. We think we are the world, but we’re not, we’re just the people. Or so sang a bunch of popstars in the 80s!

The end of the human race is our big fear, yet we’re doing sweet fuck all to prevent it. I would argue that we couldn’t prevent it, that our own destruction and disappearance from the face of this planet is as inevitable as the sun going supernova. We’re doomed.

That’s not a bad thing. It’s not a good thing either. It’s just the way things will be. Nobody said we’d last forever!

Why is it so hard to accept that nothing is permanent? I’m not permanent; I’m temporary and more so with each passing day. I’m going to die, I just don’t know when, but I get closer to my last day, every day.

I don’t have a problem accepting this fairly certain truth. And there’s nothing I can do to change it, even if I wanted to, unless they invent some immortality brain computer, but I couldn’t afford that anyway.

I’m not saying we shouldn’t try to preserve the human race, or perpetuate “our way of life” for as long as we can. What I’m saying is that doing so is an exercise in futility!

And what is our way of life, anyway?

Our way of life is to consume, anything and everything. Our way of life is devour our natural resources in a very unsustainable way. It’s just what we do and we’re damn good at it; so good in fact that we’ll never, ever stop.

All right, what personal sacrifices are you willing to make to save the planet? Will you give up your car; jet travel; your central heating or air conditioning? Will you stop watching TV, going to the cinema? How about buying your food in shops; are you ready to produce your own grub, make your own clothing? Are you ready to return to the 18th century?

Neither am I!

I love living in the modern world and all the conveniences it affords me! I love picking up my cordless, rechargeable telephone, reading a menu under the glare of an electric light and placing an order from my favourite Malaysian takeaway and then waiting for 30 minutes, while they prepare my food, flipping through the channels on my digital satellite tv receiver, while watching it on my big screen LCD TV. And much like Pavlov’s dogs, I salivate at the sound of the petrol-powered moped as it pulls up outside my north London lair with my piping hot dinner!

Stick that in your carbon footprint and smoke it!

I recharge my mobile phone and iPod with reckless abandon; I don’t think twice about sitting on my computer all day, while my stereo blasts out my favourite tunes. I drive to the shop to buy my groceries, I drive to work every night. When I’m cold, I turn up my gas-central heating and in the heat of the summer; I do have an air conditioner. I’m a burden on the resources of the planet and I’m doing next to nothing to redress the balance.

I say next to nothing, but I do make some empty gestures that are meant to make me feel better, rather than do any actual good. My car is fairly green, with a very small, fuel-efficient engine. I’ve changed all my light to energy saving bulbs; when I order from Ocado, I always choose the green delivery option. I recycle as much as my local council will allow, which at the moment is aluminium, tin paper and glass; now if they would extend that to include cardboard and plastic, my actual rubbish would be next to nothing!

Does any of that make the slightest bit of difference? I sincerely doubt it.

So what if we’re doomed. Only fools believe that the perceived superiority of the human race justifies our continued existence forever! Don’t be a fool!

How can anyone be surprised if our time is coming to a close? We’ve done more damage to the planet in a couple of centuries, than every other living thing in the millions of years before that! If any creature has earned the right of extinction, it’s us! I say, bring it on!

My nihilistic of view of things isn’t meant to bring you down. In fact, it’s intended to do just the opposite. Accepting our fate and knowing what’s coming should empower us to all do the things that give us the most pleasure.

For me, that means lots of skunky bud, because if I actually had any decent weed right now, I wouldn’t give a shit about the end of the world! And I wouldn’t be frightening all of you!

Send me some good weed! Please! I’ve had enough of the draught and the grit!

I’ll start with an apology, which will then gradually transform into a series of lame-ass excuses.

I’m very sorry for my recent lack of participation here at northlondonhippy.com – I’m a sham, a loser and a blogger only worthy of your scorn. I’ve dropped the ball; let the side down; I haven’t posted so much as a whiff of anything in nearly a month.

For shame, hippyboy, for shame!

I can only apologise for my absence and beg, no plead, no beg and plead for your forgiveness. Please.

I wish I could chalk my disappearing act on something exciting and sexy, like I was off making my directorial debut or I was being held hostage by a gang of marauding terrorist-glamour models, but sadly that’s not the case. I just haven’t felt like it.

Oh sure, there have been moments in the last month, when I’ve had ideas and subjects that I wanted to write about, but I still haven’t logged in and blogged on.

And of course, I’ve missed you. Yes, YOU, my beloved hippyfan! I don’t want to disappoint anyone, ever – even if I’ve been a disappointment to so many people, already in my life. I didn’t want to extend this into my online realm too.

Too late!

I’m not only feeling like a disappointment, I’m feeling like a failure too. Yes, here starts the lame-ass excuses; get ready.

It was my birthday last month. So what? So it’s another year gone by in an ever-decreasing pool of good years left. That can’t be good.

It’s another year of me not fulfilling my potential. Whatever that potential might be. If anyone out there can tell me, you know the email address!

I’m depressed about the state of the world. That fucking cunt, George W. (for WHAT the fuck is he doing now) Bush is sending even more troops into the quagmire that is Iraq. That really pisses me off.

And worse, he’s ramping up the rhetoric on Iran. Don’t believe the bullshit, folks. Do we all need another pointless, unjustified, unwinnable war?

One is more than enough, thank you!

And climate change is winding me up. How can I write about whimsical fun things and drugs if we’re all going to get boiled like lobsters in the not too distant future?

The end of the world appears to be coming, not with a bang, but with the sustained ferocity of blowtorch. Set air conditioners to stun!

Even Celebrity Big Brother turned sour for me. What’s the point of me writing about it, when every journalist in the world is waxing lyrical on the subject? It became world news, so I really didn’t see the point.

But by far the biggest factor in my lack of hippyness is my lack of the one thing is this world that makes me who I am. I’m talking about: weed.

Good weed has been scarce since last summer and it has only gotten worse in the last month of two. I’m not a happy hippy without weed; in fact quite the opposite.

For most people, dope takes away their motivation, for me it is the reverse. Without weed; I don’t want to do anything creative. More than don’t want; I just don’t do anything creative without it.

So where is all the weed? Now that’s big question. I’ve got two answers for you.

The first is the cops; last autumn the cracked down on as many factory farms as they could. I can understand that because these factory farms are often set up unsafely, in suburban rental homes, unbeknownst to the owners, who have rented them in good faith. They’re fire hazards and they destroy people’s private property because the homes are gutted for this purpose. I’m missing the weed produced in these places, but I can’t argue with the logic of shutting them down.

Colour me conflicted.

The other problem is one that I find even more insidious and unscrupulous. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you “grit weed”.

I haven’t mentioned this before, but I’ve been aware of it for a while and in the last couple of weeks, warnings about it have appeared in the press, so its time I did say something about it.

Evil criminals are spraying living plants with tiny glass beads as they grow. The tiny beads are then impregnated into the buds, adding weight and giving it that frosted-crystal appearance. I guess it means they can harvest the plants sooner, instead of waiting for them to mature naturally, turning around crops faster while adding weight.

This shit is really bad! If you have any of this weed, I would advise you to throw it away now!

How do you tell if you have some, or more importantly, how do you spot it before you buy some. That’s easy, lick your fingers, then pinch a bit of bud between your fingers and rub it a bit. Then lick your fingers…If you feel crunching between your teeth, then it’s grit weed! Oh and don’t worry, apparently swallowing it is not harmful and it will pass through you undigested – or so I read.

Everyone has to be on his or her guard for this stuff and you need to refuse to buy it. If everyone stops buying it, then the scumfuckers will have to stop growing it, because they won’t be able to sell it!

So between the busts and the grit, life for this weedhead has been shit lately. I’ve had the odd bit of decent dope, but never enough to feel like I’m sorted.

And guess what? If you can find any decent dope, the prices have gone up and the quantities have gone down! This is the law of supply and demand at work.

Here’s the thing, why hasn’t capitalism kicked in? Clearly there is a market in Britain for good weed, yet no one has stepped in to fill this marketplace vacuum. I don’t get it!

I know it takes a few months to turn a crop around, maybe there are loads of new commercial farms, growing high quality, unadulterated cannabis right now and soon the market will be flooded with the stuff, but somehow I doubt it. Maybe some clever “business person” is working out a way to bring boatloads of the stuff here from Holland, but again unlikely. Smuggling stinky weed is not cost effective, when a planeload of coke or smack is far more profitable with around the same risks.

So what’s the answer?

Legalise of course!

As if.

The government has a responsibility to protect people and right now they are failing. A safe, legal and taxed supply of weed should be available for all responsible adults who seek it. As long as marijuana production and distribution remains in the hands of criminals, then problems like this will always plague us.

The other answer is to grow your own. I’ve read that there has been a big upswing in home growing since all this nonsense began last summer and it seems like a great way to beat the draught and the grit! I wish I had the space, or knew someone growing their own, but I don’t.

How about you? Has all this affected your weed intake? If the answer is “no”, then I would really like to hear from you, especially if you can get me some high quality, skunky bud! Maybe you’re so proud of your most recent crop that you’d like someone else to appreciate it. I’d be happy to be that person!

Everyone thinks I’m joking when I plead for weed. I wish I were!