The northlondonhippy

Archive for March, 2009

Shot with my Polaroid Zi6 video camera attached to a Gorilla Pod, which was hanging upside from the rear view mirror of my car as I drove around north London.

Edited on iMovie ’09 in less than an hour. I sped the footage up as much as I could, which turns out is 800% or 8 times normal speed.

The music is something I recorded years ago which just sort of worked.

I still have way too much time on my hands.

And thus with his six-hundred and eighty-eighth post, did the northlondonhippy mark this most auspicious occasion.

Yep, fuckers its true, today is the fifth anniversary of me posting crap on the internet.

I contemplated an elaborate fireworks display along the Thames tonight, with a one-hundred piece, live orchestra to provide the backing music, but then I thought, naaaaah.

I’ll just write something quick, off the top of my head that marks the day without adding anything to the greater understanding of the human condition.

I also considered all sorts of other things; contests, a circus performance, a live human sacrifice or even a long, drawn out, over-wrought post which reflected in great detail on the last five years of my life.

Naaaah!

This website and whatever it is I do here exactly, isn’t like that. Never has been, probably never will be.

Instead, I like to think of it as a cool place to virtually hang out, where you can read some shit what I wrote or just stare at the smiley face on my banner. As long as you like being here, I don’t mind what floats your boat.

When I started blogging five years ago, I didn’t have a job, a future or a clue about what I was doing…five years later and well, at least I’ve improved on two outta three.

And before you ask, I have a job now and I have a clue about what I’m doing.

Oh, right.

As I established before, this website stopped being a blog a long time ago. I can’t remember the last time I mentioned what I had for lunch.

Or even ate lunch now that I think of it.

This website is my tiny little corner of the internet, where I can do whatever the fuck I like. The fact that people come and still read it is a testiment not to my talent, but to the overall bleak and dreary nature of a modern existence.

For a few minutes, while you’re here, maybe you forget about your own problems and think about mine for a while instead.

And damn do I have problems! Besides the obvious psychiatric ones.

Remember I’m a manic-depressive sociopath with obsessive-compulsive, narcissistic tendencies.

At least that’s what it says on my doctor’s notes.

I’m a short, fat, balding middle-aged, make-believe hippy and weed-head who you wouldn’t give a second thought to if you passed me on the streets. I don’t stand out in a crowd.

And that’s OK.

This website is where I rant and rave; where I express myself and sometimes even confess some of my extensive collection of sins.

This website is where I tell the truth as best I can, about whatever topic I choose; be it weed or world events or even myself.

Especially myself. While self-deception may truly be my favourite form of deception, I don’t try to trick any of you, any more than I try to fool myself.

I’m free to do all of that because of my anonymous online identity as the northlondonhippy.

There’re only a handful of people who know that I do this in the real world, probably well under a dozen. I don’t mind if they find out my secrets, since I’ve probably told them already, anyway.

And it wouldn’t matter if you did know my name, I could type it right now and you would say, “So what?”

You’d be right.

I maintain my anonymity because I spend a lot of time writing about cannabis and my love of it. Until its legally available, I’m staying anonymous.

One of my aims here is to dispel the stupid myths surrounding my favourite plant. That’s an area where I do feel like I’ve been somewhat successful. Anyone reading my cannabis-related material would get a lot of hard, verifiable facts, not the lies and deceit shovelled by the mainstream media here in the UK.

I’ve been extremely honest about my nearly 30 years of daily cannabis use. Oh and for the record, most of its been “skunk” and I haven’t killed anyone.

Yet.

I’ve been through a lot in the last five years, but then who hasn’t?

Five years is a reasonably long time to be doing the same thing. Quite frankly I didn’t think my attention span was up to it, but I here I am, still typing away.

For some reason, I suddenly feel I need to mention my parents, I guess because I lost them both in the last five years; my mother just last xmas and my father in September of 2004. I used to write more about them, but I don’t so much now.

I miss them.

I should also mention two more people, starting with my younger brother, who is also the designer and webmaster of this site. None of this would be possible without him and I owe him a great deal of thanks.

And Mrs. Hippy, whose love and support I rely on every day and have done for well over a decade. I don’t know what I would do without her, but luckily I won’t have to find out.

And then there’s me, weed-head, media-whore, sinner & saint. I proclaim my insignificance in the universe with a perverse sense of pride.

I’m a messiah for the new millennium, it says so at the top of this page, so it must be true.

I’m the biggest internet celebrity you’ve never heard of….until now…

So gimme a yippeee, I’m the northlondonhippy!

And what do the next five years have in store for the northlondonhippy?

Fuck me, do I really have to keep doing this for another five years?

I’ve been trying to get my head around the steady, constant stream of followers who come and go like the tides. It seems I’m just about gaining and losing them in equal numbers and its all rather random.

I’ve been looking at the data compiled at TweetEffect.Com, which cross-references your tweets with the gains and loses in your followers. In looking at my data, it seems the same tweets attract and repel at the same time.

Confusing!

It got me to thinking about the best ways to instantly attract a following on Twitter. I came up with ten ideas that I thought I would share:

1) Be famous already – If you are already famous, you have an established fan base and an instant following. Of course, if you’re already famous you don’t need my help.

2) Imitate a celebrity – This is surprisingly effective, but can be short lived. Oh and pointless, now that @Valebrity and @CelebsWhoTwitter are making efforts to verify them. That said, a fake Tina Fey has over 100,000 followers, you could just change the account name and sell it on eBay for heaps of cash.

3) Get endorsed by @wossy or @stephenfry – Your Twitter name mentioned or recommended by either of them, or any other celebrity with a large following will attract scores of new followers. Whether or not they remain loyal to you is another question.

4) Take a photo of a commercial airliner in the Hudson River or of one crashing near Amsterdam – If fate puts you someplace where something significant is happening, document it as best you can. Take photos if you have a cameraphone and tweet them, tweet about what you see. If it is important enough and you are there soon enough, everyone will want to see what you capture next.

5) Follow everyone and hope a large percentage follow u back – This is the equivalent of throwing as much shit as you can at a wall and hoping some of it sticks. And like shit and desperation, this one smells bad too, don’t bother.

6) Swear profusely – Thanks to CurseBird.Com, the more you use bad language, the higher your rank on that website. I like it.

7) Require a rescue – This one would be good as long as you survive, but if you don’t, its a bit pointless. Hope you’re never in a position to find out!

8) Offer people a free laptop – I don’t know if this works, but I do seem to get followed by a lot of people who want to give me a free MacBook Air.

9) Offer to tweet your credit cards numbers if u hit 1,000 followers – Guilty! Yes this one’s from me. I’ve still got a long way to go.

10) Be refreshingly original & entertaining – it couldn’t hurt!

The Economist, a rather conservative publication, has come out strongly in favour of the legalisation, taxation and government regulation of drugs.

All drugs.

The article I am referring to is RIGHT HERE and is well worth a few minutes of your valuable surfing time because it lays out a very rational, sensible and persuasive argument for this radical suggestion.

As the UN meets in Vienna to decide the next decade’s drug policy, why won’t they listen to the experts?

There are so many intelligent, educated, thoughtful members of respectable society who believe legalisation is the only solution. There are loads of senior policemen who believe this, many civil servants and politicians do too, but they are too afraid to speak up because of the false hysteria surrounding the issue.

David Cameron, most likely the next Prime Minister of this country is sympathetic to the idea of radically changing our approach on the subject as mentioned in this, another well written and thoughtful piece on the subject from politics.co.uk

I’ve always thought we’ve had more of a chance of changing the laws under a conservative government, because it takes a strong party to take decisive action.

If David Cameron would take one key step in that direction, he could have my support.

Mr. Cameron, I implore you to shift your public position based on facts and science. Please consider decriminalising or legalising cannabis as soon as you are in power.

Finally, a government drug policy I agree with completely…

Illegal factory-style cannabis farms should be closed down.

Check out THIS REPORT from the BBC.

Factory cannabis-farms are often set-up in rented accommodation, with the landlords none the wiser until they receive a phone call from the police telling them their income property has been trashed.

Illegal cannabis farmers steal electricity from neighbours or from the an energy supplier; either way its theft and its wrong. Safety is ignored and fires are not uncommon. And saddest of all, they are frequently staffed by illegal aliens trapped in a type of hellish indentured servitude.

Where I split from the government is their choice of solution; police raids won’t make the problem go away, it will only make it relocate to yet another unsuspecting venue. The trade is far too lucrative for those involved to give it up. Raids are simply a calculated risk balanced against a very rewarding return.

Its supply and demand, the very cornerstone of our capitalist system. To ignore or deny this very simple truth, is to be blinkered and ostrich like.

There’s a better way.

There’s always a better way, but it would involve our leaders shifting their current position, which is one of disinformation and lies, towards a more open and honest approach.

Its time to legalise the industry and take it out of the hands of criminals. Its time to regulate and tax cannabis, bring the market under some sort of control.

To be against a legal cannabis industry is to be against the very heart and soul of capitalism.

Don’t let the conditioning the media has been force-feeding you colour your view on this. They’ve been systematically trying to discredit cannabis and pervert your perception of it for quite some time now.

Why?

Its easy to score points with the public by appearing tough on drugs. Also, it diverts your attention from more important issues, like Iraq, climate change or the economy.

The time is now for this unadulterated bullshit to end.

Back when Blair and Blunkett were in charge, cannabis was downgraded and they even toyed with a police policy of making arrests for possession of cannabis the lowest possible priority. Things were finally moving in the right direction, the government was listening to advisors and scientistis and using a bit of common sense.

Meanwhile in America, the “war on drugs” was still going strong, along with federal raids on medical marijuana clubs and imprisonment for possession. This wasn’t that long ago.

Under Obama, things have already changed with an end to federal raids and an official policy that secedes power to individual states with regards to cannabis.

California is now considering legalisation and taxation, because the state is nearly bankrupt. Desperate times clearly call for creative measures, this one will bring Cali an estimated annual tidy sum of $1.3 billion (with a B) dollars.

Many other states have decriminalised possession and have made it the lowest possible policing priority.

Our out-of-touch, out-of-step government is about as un-Obama as possible.

If people wonder why Obama didn’t make more time for Gordon Brown, they’re not really looking closely enough. They couldn’t be more polar opposites when it comes to genuine liberal thought and policy.

Legalising weed would create legitimate jobs, for legitimate farmers and distributors; jobs that already exist in the black economy, fuelling a rather sizeable black market that exists outside the tax and social security system.

A legal and controlled industry would insure that safety standards were met at the point of production, for the facilities, the staff and the product. You would know the weed you were getting was pure and unadulterated. You would know the person who grew it was paid a reasonable, taxable wage.

As much as I wish to see these dangerous and illegal cannabis farms closed down, I’m smart enough to realise that police raids alone are not the answer. If you really want to end the illegal cannabis trade, there is only one practical, workable solution: Legalise!

Even the UN may come to this conclusion as they prepare to finalise an agreement this week in Vienna, but as this report in today’s Guardian suggests, there are still deep divisions with some EU and Latin American countries favouring a more rational approach, with the US preferring to continue the pointless “war on drugs”.

Oh President Saviour Obama, are you listening? The “war on drugs” has been an abysmal failure and many knowledgeable and respectable people believe its been worse than the actual harm caused by the drugs themselves. Could you please call your minions in Vienna and sort this sorry mess out?

If you want to know more, please check out my Cannabis Truth Series

Having a somewhat pointlessly devious mind means you occasionally spot things that are meant to be used one way, but can just as easily be exploited to be used another way.

Every user account on Twitter offers you the chance to receive the tweets it generates via an RSS feed.

If you don’t know what an RSS feed is, click right here.

If you have either your browser or a newsreader app configured to deal with RSS feeds, all you need to do is click on the RSS link and its magically added to your subscriptions list.

The link on Twitter profiles is easy to find, its just below the thumbnail photos of the people being followed:

Once you’ve added the link to your RSS reader, every time you refresh it, you will receive the tweets from the selected feeds, assuming they’ve sent anything since the last time you updated.

All that’s fair enough, but what if you wanted to follow someone without them knowing you’re following them. Perhaps an ex-partner, maybe even your current one or your boss or your best friend or your worst enemy, whoever?

You can use this method to accomplish just that, stalking with stealth on Twitter.

If you follow someone’s tweets via your RSS reader, you won’t appear in their followers list. You won’t appear anywhere and only you will know you’re receiving them.

Sneaky and cool, eh?

Now, I know there are people out there who might use this relatively simple technique for nefarious purposes, but I’m sure you’re not one of them. Right?

Promises, promises. Politicians make them all the time when they are campaigning, only to conveniently forget about them once in office, but not President Saviour Obama.

This week, US Attorney General, Eric Holder confirmed that federal raids on Medical Marijuana facilities would end and individual states could determine their own policies regarding my favourite plant. He said this is “now American policy”.

How cool is that?

This is a huge shift in the way the law deals with weed in America. I wish the UK could be equally enlightened, but the government here works very hard to be as un-Obama-like as possible.

And they don’t want to stop there either. Legislators in California are now considering taking it one step further, with a possible plan to fully legalise and tax cannabis to help bale out the financially destitute state. They say it could bring in $1.3 billion (with a B) in tax revenue to the state annually.

That’s a lot of greenbacks for a lot of greenery! Its common fucking sense! Prohibition doesn’t work, never has, never will. If you can’t beat ‘em, tax ‘em.

Obama’s motto throughout his campaign was “Yes, we can.” Now that he’s in office, the new motto is: “Yes, we cannabis!”

Roseanne Barr, domestic goddess, comedian and now radio talkshow host is selling some very cool tee-shirts in America with that very slogan on them, Yes, we CANnabis.

We should all order ourselves one to show our support for this long overdue change in policy. Let’s hope that it spreads out from America to the rest of the world.