The northlondonhippy

Archive for March, 2010

As an exper­i­ment, I have restored the facil­ity to com­ment on my posts. I’ve done this because I am test­ing out a new plug in that is sup­posed to deal with spam comments.

That’s the rea­son com­ments were dis­abled, because of the over­whelm­ing amount of spam com­ments I was receiv­ing on a daily basis. At its peak, I was attract­ing over 1000 spam com­ments a day, for any­thing from porn and via­gra to online casi­nos and life-extending med­ica­tions. It was more than I could keep up with as I had to mod­er­ate each one.

Mod­er­a­tion will con­tinue and I will need to approve any com­ments before they are pub­lished. I will try to approve gen­uine com­ments, good or bad, as quickly as I can. If this spam plug in actu­ally works, I will con­sider turn­ing mod­er­a­tion off.

So that’s it kids, feel free to chip in with your 2 cents and let’s all hope I don’t get hit with more wacky spam com­ment crap. Enjoy!

No doubt you’ve caught the media frenzy sur­round­ing the most recent legal high of choice, mephedrone. Its the lat­est in a long line of legal highs, sold openly and pos­sessed with­out fear of arrest.

Who wouldn’t want a high that was legal? Isn’t that the ulti­mate goal? Sure, booze is legal and will get you absolutely blotto, but so what? Peo­ple want a choice of intoxicants.

I don’t like liquor and if asked, will declare that I no longer drink. Its true, I can’t remem­ber the last time I had even a sip of alco­hol. The hang­overs were just too much to bear. I’m too old for a self-inflicted sore head.

Where does that leave you if you don’t like booze, but you do enjoy alter­ing your state of con­scious­ness? Black mar­ket drugs like weed and coke and smack and MDMA and speed and LSD I guess.

But what if you don’t want to break the law? I’ve already sug­gested vot­ing for lead­ers who would change the laws, but we can’t seem to find any, except for the Lib Dems and if its going to be a hung par­lia­ment any­way, then we should all vote for the Lib Dems so they can have a big­ger share of the even­tual coali­tion government.

But I digress. If you want to get high with­out break­ing the law, you look for some­thing legal.

Until 2005, fresh magic mush­rooms were legal to pur­chase and pos­sess in the UK.

Finally, there was a legal high avail­able that was pro­foundly effec­tive and read­ily avail­able. I shroomed reg­u­larly for a cou­ple of years, every week or two. I was always care­ful, I stayed in a safe, com­fort­able envi­ron­ment (my own home) and had very pleas­ant, enjoy­able times. It was eas­ily one of the best drug expe­ri­ences of my life, I can’t begin to express how much I enjoyed it.

Well, I can and I did, if you read the first cou­ple of years of my out­put here, I rave about shrooms con­tin­u­ally. Taken respon­si­bly and with a rough knowl­edge of the appro­pri­ate dosage, shrooms are rel­a­tively harm­less. You would need to con­sume your own weight in mush­rooms for the dose to be fatally toxic and I haven’t heard about any­one who’s tried.

You could always pick fresh mush­rooms in the wild, pro­vided you knew what you were look­ing for, because the wrong type of mush­room could be fatally toxic at a much lower dosage. But if you were buy­ing them from some­one who could reli­ably tell you the strain, with knowl­edge of where they were farmed and advice on how many to take, you would be much bet­ter off.

And for a few years, we were much bet­ter off, with our safe, easy to buy fresh shrooms. It was bliss.

And then they got very pop­u­lar. And then the media got inter­ested. And then the gov­ern­ment got involved. And then they were banned.

The above para­graph will be repeated again, you will notice, I promise.

And so I did sadly lament the demise of my beloved shrooms because the gov­ern­ment man didn’t want me to have any more fun.

But it was too late, the mar­ket for legal highs had been estab­lished, a decent cus­tomer base still existed. All they needed was another prod­uct, some­thing legal that would fuck you up a bit.

The answer came from New Zealand:

BZP

BZP came as some­thing called party pills, which was a big change from fresh shrooms, it was a man made chem­i­cal of dubi­ous ori­gin. Rumour was it was used for worm­ing pets, but it gave peo­ple a buzz, so we tried it.

It worked. It was quite speedy and a bit spacey, pleas­ant but not over­whelm­ing. There were many brands, legal high forums were brim­ming with reviews to help you choose. Peo­ple were happy to have any­thing that was legal and had an effect.

And then they got very pop­u­lar. And then the media got inter­ested. And then the gov­ern­ment got involved. And then they were banned.

Right around the same time, the first legal mar­i­juana sub­sti­tutes that worked came along, the first was called Spice, which has become a generic term for these drugs. The ingre­di­ents were kept secret, so we didn’t know what the magic herbs we were smok­ing were, but we knew they got us high.

Turns out the herbs weren’t magic, but the JHW-081 they sprayed onto it was. JHW-081 is a syn­thetic cannabi­noid, made in a lab to mimic THC. Sneaky fuck­ers, no won­der it worked.

As if overnight, many dif­fer­ent brands of smok­ing mix­tures came on to the mar­ket, all with a very sim­i­lar weed-like effect. It was legal, but it was also expen­sive, and in some cases pricier than real weed.

Think about that, peo­ple were will­ing to pay more for a legal weed alter­na­tive, than actual weed. That says a lot.

And then they got very pop­u­lar. And then the media got inter­ested. And then the gov­ern­ment got involved. And then they were banned.

In the gloom of my post-legal-shrooms exis­tence, I tried many of these legal highs and a few years ago, I was get­ting these rather delight­ful lit­tle cap­sules shipped in legally from Israel.

They tried to keep the ingre­di­ents a secret, but with a bit of research, I dis­cov­ered it was a chem­i­cal related to cathi­none, which is the active ingre­di­ent in khat, the Africa plant that is used as a stim­u­lant when chewed.

At first, I only ordered a cou­ple and found them quite pleas­ant and quite strong, closer to real MDMA than BZP or the crap that fol­lowed. I ordered a few more, and then a few more.

And then I ordered a lot.

And then I lost a cou­ple of days. No lie, I think my ben­der lasted around 48 hours. Peo­ple were con­cerned, I just dis­ap­peared. It was the most mor­ish drug I’ve ever had and I used to do coke years ago. I kept going until I swal­lowed the last pill I had.

Then I crashed for a cou­ple of days and felt extremely depressed. I was angry with myself for los­ing con­trol, some­thing I rarely if ever do while under the influ­ence of any­thing. I didn’t con­trol this drug, this drug con­trolled me.

It didn’t, ever again. I didn’t touch any more after that. It seemed to tar­get my plea­sure cen­tre with laser-guided pre­ci­sion. No thanks.

Guess what I am 99.9% cer­tain that drug was?

Mephedrone.

Kids, lis­ten to your old uncle hippy, that shit’s not worth it. Its way too mor­ish. It feels absolutely won­der­ful when you’re tak­ing it and you will want to take it end­lessly. You can’t, even­tu­ally the money, or your body will give out and then you will crash. The crash sucks. Its not worth the pleasure.

As much as I don’t like mephedrone, I am merely sug­gest­ing (in strong, unam­bigu­ous terms) that you not take it, I am not sug­gest­ing some knee jerk reac­tionary ban. Actu­ally, I think it makes more sense to keep it legal and out in the open. at least until you have an alter­na­tive to offer.

If the gov­ern­ment can’t offer an alter­na­tive (I sug­gest weed, please), the mar­ket­place will find one. It always does, because we live in a cap­i­tal­ist soci­ety and sup­ply will always try to meet demand.

Oh, and if you’re against sup­ply and demand, even in the illicit mar­ket­place, then you are against the very foun­da­tion of cap­i­tal­ism. So take that all you anti-drug com­mie pinko social­ists! Get on the free mar­ket band­wagon, don’t get in the way of trade!

Ban­ning mephedrone isn’t the answer, unless the ques­tion is: “how can we get another untested, cut­ting edge man-made intox­i­cant into the hands of our chil­dren in the quick­est pos­si­ble time?”

I’ve yet to see one con­clu­sive report of a death being caused directly by mephedrone. I’ve seen lots of bull­shit about it being “linked” to a few untimely deaths, but alco­hol and other drugs have also been in the mix, though that hasn’t been highlighted.

If I drank myself to death right now while eat­ing a banana, you could quite accu­rately state that, until the coroner’s report is issued, my death was linked to eat­ing a banana. I can see the head­lines now, “Ban the Yel­low Scourge”.

Booze kills and kills often, but the alco­hol indus­try spends a lot of money on image and rep­u­ta­tion man­age­ment. When you think of liquor, you don’t think of corpses, do you? No, you think of good times, par­ties and women in tight dresses that you know will have sex with you.

Think about how many times you’ve got­ten pissed, puked your insides out and woke up the next day feel­ing like death, swear­ing you’d never ever do that to your­self again. Until next Saturday.

That’s either effec­tive mar­ket­ing or addic­tion. Or both.

The legal high indus­try isn’t organ­ised, they don’t have a cen­tralised body to speak on their behalf and be their pub­lic face. Its the same for ille­gal highs for that mat­ter. Who rep­re­sents them? Who does their spinning?

No one.

Maybe its time they did.

People’s need to get high, to be intox­i­cated, to alter their state, is not new and its not going away any time soon. There will always be a demand for sub­stances, legal or oth­er­wise, that change your mood.

Recent his­tory has shown that when given the choice, peo­ple pre­fer legal sub­stances, even if they cost more and have less pleas­ant effects than their ille­gal rivals.

If the gov­ern­ment left well enough alone with my old friends, magic mush­rooms, none of us would have ever heard of mephedrone and what­ever might follow.

Go on, if you let us all have legal weed, we can leave all is designer drug shit alone. Please?

I’ve been doing this for six years, today.

Blah, blah, blah, blah blah.

Check out my first ever post from six years ago. CLICK HERE

Happy anniver­sary, fuckers!

Remem­ber the Soup Nazi from Seinfeld?

“No soup for you!”, he would exclaim when he deter­mined some­one was unwor­thy of his tasty broth.

Ever won­der what hap­pened to the Soup Nazi since the TV show went off the air?

He works for Apple, reject­ing iPhone app sub­mis­sions. “No app for you!”, he exclaimed as he con­sid­ered an app from your favourite inde­pen­dent blog­ger and inter­net god.

I mean me.

I don’t get to have my very own iPhone app, the App Nazi says so.

Apple’s recent pol­icy change ban­ning inde­pen­dent blog­gers from sub­mit­ting apps to for pub­li­ca­tion on iTunes is still piss­ing me off.

And here’s the thing, it would still piss me off even if I wasn’t directly effected by their deci­sion. Its wrong to silence any voice, how­ever big or small. We all have a right to express our­selves, on any plat­form we choose, on any sub­ject we choose.

I chose to put an app together to bring my con­tent to the iPhone plat­form. Apple, as the provider of the plat­form, have locked me out.

I should have tried to pub­lish a fart app. Appar­ently, you can’t have too many of them.

It could be argued that my con­tent is already avail­able on the iPhone plat­form, via Safari, the iPhone’s browser. You’d win that argu­ment, its true.

All my app did was present this web­site, along with some other enter­tain­ing con­tent pro­vided and owned by me in a very iPhone friendly for­mat, via a cus­tom designed app. One tap on the northlon­don­hippy icon on your Home Screen and you’d be here, hang­ing out vir­tu­ally with me. No book­marks or URLs, just a clean, easy to read inter­face, with groovy NLH graphics.

It would have cost Apple pen­nies to host my free app. Its not like they’re strapped for cash, they’ve got bil­lions just lying around, doing nothing.

They could shut me up with a cou­ple of mil­lion. Or a free iPad.

But they don’t need to shut me up. Nobody seems to give a shit. I emailed a few tech web­sites and news­pa­pers with my sad tale of Apple app woe. Nobody bit.

Links to my pre­vi­ous entry did get tweeted around Twit­ter and buzzed across Google Buzz, or what­ever the kids are doing these days but I am still wait­ing for a groundswell of pop­u­lar sup­port which would push Apple to recon­sider this very fool­ish, point­less and spite­ful decision.

Apple began in Steve Wozniak’s garage, with Woz and Steve Jobs knock­ing together the first Apple com­puter. Blog­ging is not much dif­fer­ent than that, we’re all out here just knock­ing stuff together. Some make it into the main­stream, some toil in rel­a­tive obscu­rity, but most just seem to give up. Many blogs lie dor­mant after a brief, unsat­is­fy­ing flurry of activ­ity, but not this one.

I know I’m not the most pro­lific blog­ger, but I’m still here and have been for 6 fun filled years. Ok, they haven’t been that much fun, but I am still here.

I’ve been toy­ing with the idea of hang­ing up my hippy hat. This isn’t meant to be a threat or some drama queen strop. I’ve con­sid­ered giv­ing up before, but I’ve always man­aged to find rea­sons to keep going and ended up rein­vig­o­rated at the end of it.

Right now, I just feel tired.

The iPhone app was meant to re-inspire me and it would have, if only briefly. But isn’t that the way this works? You are con­stantly search­ing for new inspi­ra­tion to keep you going.

The weird thing is, for a niche blog that doesn’t get updated very often, I do some good busi­ness. When I look at a graph of my vis­i­tor lev­els, its always an upward incline. I make a bit of dosh too, with my lim­ited adver­tis­ing and solo affil­i­ate scheme.

I’ve recently been spec­u­lat­ing that would still be the case, even if I didn’t post any­thing new. There’s a lot of con­tent on my web­site, six years of spew­ing dri­vel will do that. I could prob­a­bly just let this web­site sit here, do noth­ing and still main­tain my reach.

Yes, I’ve been giv­ing seri­ous thought to giv­ing up and quite stu­pidly, mainly because Apple refused to pub­lish my app. Maybe there is no place for inde­pen­dent blog­gers in the world any more and Apple is just ahead of the curve. If your web­site doesn’t have a staff of 30, then no one takes it seri­ously and you might as well not exist.

What’s a self obsessed weed­head and middle-aged fail­ure at life to do?

If I knew the answer to that one, fuck­ers, I wouldn’t be sit­ting here typ­ing out this shit, would I?