The northlondonhippy

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I’ve been a big fan of Post Secret (postsecret.com) for years. I even included a pos­i­tive men­tion of it on my web­site nearly four years ago.

Its prob­a­bly one of the most pop­u­lar “blogs” on the inter­net, though call­ing it a “blog” doesn’t really fit as far as I can tell. It is much more than that.

Post Secret started out with a very sim­ple idea. The cre­ator, Frank War­ren, asked peo­ple to anony­mously send him pic­ture post­cards con­tain­ing their secrets. Many peo­ple have and many con­tinue to send him their deep­est and dark­est on a reg­u­lar basis. New secrets are posted on Sun­days and remain on the web­site for a week.

I’ve been a reg­u­lar vis­i­tor, mak­ing sure to vir­tu­ally swing by to read the lat­est every Sun­day, faith­fully for as long as I’ve known about it. Each visit always evokes some emo­tional response from me, whether its sym­pa­thy, or under­stand­ing or amuse­ment, I am always moved in some way, some­times to tears.

It’s good to feel.

I’ve learned a lot about peo­ple and the human con­di­tion too. It amazes me how cre­ative peo­ple are, how expres­sive an art form a sim­ple post card can be, but most of all, how will­ing the con­trib­u­tors are to share their inner most hopes, fears and long held secrets.

Not only has Frank has turned his web­site into a thriv­ing online com­mu­nity, but he has pub­lished many books and seems to be on tour, giv­ing lec­tures and shows across Amer­ica all the time. I own a few of his books and they include many post cards that haven’t appeared on the web­site. He really does get tons.

Early this morn­ing, Lon­don time, the long awaited Post Secret app (iTunes Link here) was finally made avail­able in the iTunes Store. It’s £1.49 ($1.99) and well worth adding to your col­lec­tion. It’s expected to be avail­able for Android soon, if that’s your plat­form of choice.

Frank and his design­ers have taken the con­cept of shar­ing secrets and built upon it, using the capa­bil­i­ties of your iPhone to make it so much more.

Of course, you can see other people’s secrets and there’s var­i­ous ways to do that. You can view the most pop­u­lar secrets, or the lat­est posted, but coolest of all, you can search them geo­graph­i­cally. Don’t worry, the app won’t show your home address, just your city or town, though it appears its pos­si­ble to tag it to a spe­cific pub­lic loca­tion, like a school or busi­ness. That is very cool.

How do the secrets get loca­tion tagged? Sim­ple, the app allows you to cre­ate your own secret post card, by tak­ing a photo, then adding some text on top, then decid­ing if you want to include a gen­eral loca­tion. I haven’t shared any secrets so far, so I haven’t tested it yet…but I might some­day and if I do, you won’t know it’s me, even if it’s tagged with Lon­don. I’m always anony­mous online, so you can see the obvi­ous appeal for me.

You can also “like” secrets, share them on Twit­ter and Face­book too.

I can’t rec­om­mend this app enough and I highly sug­gest you buy it right now. What are you wait­ing for??

Dis­claimer: I have no con­nec­tion to Post Secret what­so­ever, and I am not prof­it­ing from this endorse­ment in any way.

I’m enjoy­ing ran­dom, manic thoughts, induced by 25 hours of con­tin­u­ous con­scious­ness. In my world, this is not uncommon.

I thought I would try to cap­ture the spirit and essence of the expe­ri­ence, but as you would expect, now that I’m typ­ing, the effect has dis­ap­peared. I’m focussing on being func­tional and typ­ing words that might make some sem­blance of sense, rather than con­vey­ing the sur­real nature of being me right now.

I’ve had spe­cial cook­ies. Its Mon­day morn­ing, at 10:30am and I’m wide awake, sleep should come soon, but did I men­tion the heat?

Its hot here.

Glad that’s out of the way.

I really should be sleep­ing, I will be sleep­ing, once I wind down. I’ve had a rather busy and event­ful 25 hours, and the week before that was a bit drain­ing, lit­er­ally, as I had a blocked one out back and it was a shitty ordeal deal­ing with it.

I need to blow off some steam, but its 10:33am on a Mon­day morn­ing, nor­mal peo­ple have things to do, peo­ple to see, places to be…but not me.

Also, said my sub-conscious, I got news yes­ter­day of the sud­den pass­ing of an old friend. My friend was a cou­ple years younger than me, just to add to the angst. I don’t deal well with death, unless obsess­ing about it in var­i­ous abstract ways for decades counts as deal­ing with it, in which case I win.

Blame the inter­net for this sud­den burst of ran­dom crap, if my down­load speeds were faster for my sto­ries, I’d be watch­ing them and not harass­ing the world with this stream of con­scious­ness bull­shit… because let’s face it, the delib­er­ate act of typ­ing this out removes any chance of shar­ing the state of my mind. Every word, every key stroke, forces a deci­sion, which then forces another, which then pre­de­ter­mines my actions as opposed to just let­ting the stream of weird run free.

Or I could go check my down­loads and leave all of you nice peo­ple alone. Sorry for the dis­tur­bance, please do call again.

Check out this groovy video!

Its a mash-up of the top 25 sin­gles from Bill­board mag­a­zine. Yes, its Amer­i­can, so you might not recog­nise every artist, but its cool anyway.

Dig it

(You can fol­low the northlon­don­hippy on Twit­ter, just click that blue but­ton on the top right!)

Yes, another cat video, but this one is short, under 30 sec­onds. Go on, watch the lit­tle gin­ger cat spin.

The fol­low­ing arti­cles pro­vide the foun­da­tion for my “cannabis truth series”. These reports are the sources and ref­er­ences I used when putting it together.

A few peo­ple emailed ask­ing if I could pull this list together — I can and I have. I hope you all find it use­ful. Please feel free to refer peo­ple to this page, or my “truth series”, espe­cially when you spot mis­re­port­ing or mis­in­for­ma­tion on the sub­ject in the press. You’re going to be see­ing lots of that in the near future, so please don’t hes­i­tate in point­ing out the truth to those who pub­lish unsub­stan­ti­ated lies!

Gov­ern­ment drugs pol­icy does not work, says report
by Alexan­dra Top­ping
Fri­day March 9, 2007
http://www.guardian.co.uk/drugs/Story/0„2029756,00.html

Tak­ing the harm out of drugs
by India Knight
March 11, 2007
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/india_knight/article1496833.ece

Cannabis use down since legal change
by Alan Travis, home affairs edi­tor
Fri­day Octo­ber 26 2007
http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2007/oct/26/drugsandalcohol.homeaffairs

Fewer young peo­ple using cannabis but more are turn­ing to cocaine
by Richard Ford, Home Cor­re­spon­dent
Octo­ber 26, 2007
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article2738569.ece

Cannabis use is ‘falling fast’ among young adults
By Nigel Mor­ris, Home Affairs Cor­re­spon­dent
26 Octo­ber 2007
http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/crime/article3098871.ece

Drugs strat­egy debate ‘is a sham’
by Jamie Doward, home affairs edi­tor
Sun­day Octo­ber 21, 2007
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0„2195985,00.html

Think Again: Drugs
By Ethan Nadel­mann
September/October 2007
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/story/cms.php?story_id=3932&page=0

Legalise all drugs: chief con­sta­ble demands end to ‘immoral laws’
By Jonathan Brown and David Lang­ton
15 Octo­ber 2007
http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/politics/article3061121.ece

For­mer pris­ons inspec­tor backs call to legalise drugs
By Nigel Mor­ris, Home Affairs Cor­re­spon­dent
16 Octo­ber 2007
http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/politics/article3063804.ece

Skunk strength has dou­bled, stud­ies sug­gest
by Alan Travis, home affairs edi­tor
Mon­day Sep­tem­ber 17, 2007
http://www.guardian.co.uk/drugs/Story/0„2170798,00.html

Warn­ing issued over cannabis adul­ter­ated with glass beads
by James Ran­der­son, sci­ence cor­re­spon­dent
Fri­day Jan­u­ary 12, 2007
http://www.guardian.co.uk/drugs/Story/0„1988627,00.html

I smoked cannabis. I went mad. But life’s not that sim­ple
by Rufus May
29 July 2007
http://comment.independent.co.uk/commentators/article2814693.ece

Experts dis­miss case for cannabis reclas­si­fi­ca­tion
by David Batty and agen­cies
Fri­day July 27, 2007
http://www.guardian.co.uk/drugs/Story/0„2136450,00.html

Debunked: politi­cians’ excuse that cannabis has become stronger
By Jeremy Lau­rance, Health Edi­tor
21 July 2007
http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/politics/article2788634.ece

Reefer Mad­ness Revis­ited
by Fran­cis Sedge­more
11 June 2007
http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/francis_sedgemore/2007/06/reefer_madness_revisited.html

Cherry pick­ing data to prove a point about cannabis
by Ben Goldacre
Sat­ur­day March 24, 2007
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0„2041711,00.html

Hi there. I just wanted to apol­o­gise for the tech­ni­cal prob­lems my site had yes­ter­day. I still don’t know what was going on, but things seem sorted now. My lay­out went a bit crazy, but it all seems back to nor­mal now. Spe­cial apolo­gies if your RSS reader went a lit­tle funny too.

Nor­mal ser­vice has now resumed!

- the northlondonhippy

My keener-eyed read­ers might have already noticed that I’ve added a cou­ple of more affil­i­ate links to my page today. I’m expand­ing my empire with a lit­tle bit more advertising.

I’d like to wel­come the Body Jew­ellery Shop and Firebox.com to the grow­ing northlon­don­hippy fam­ily. I think they sit along side my friends at EDIT rather nicely.

I have to admit that I don’t actu­ally have any body pierc­ings, but if I did, I’m sure I would pur­chase all my adorn­ments from the Body Jew­ellery Shop. They’re run by the same peo­ple as EDIT, so you can expect the same high level of cus­tomer ser­vice and wide range of choice.

Firebox.com has the dis­tinc­tion of being the very first web­site this hippy ever pur­chased any­thing from online. It was a lit­tle keychain-torch with a blue LED and I still have it today. Since then I’ve bought all sorts of gad­gets and toys from them and can rec­om­mend them very highly.

I won’t put just any shit on my page! I’m choos­ing my part­ners very care­fully so as to bring you only the best selec­tion of online retail­ers. If I wouldn’t use them myself, I wouldn’t ask you to shop with them either!

So please feel free to inves­ti­gate all of my affil­i­ate links, they are some of the finest web retail­ers you are likely to ever visit!

I spent a good chunk of yes­ter­day off my face on some Funk Pills. It was a Wednes­day, which is just as good as any other day to par­take in some legal highs.

I decided to try Funk’s Twisted (Psy­che­delic Funk) which are sup­posed to be the trippy ones from their line of party pills.

I took the first cap­sule around 3pm on an empty stom­ach, then sat back until the effects began. At around 4pm, just as I was start­ing to come up from the first one, I took a second.

The high was to be expected from some­thing BZP based – I started feel­ing up and happy and some­what euphoric. What I didn’t get was any over­whelm­ing psy­che­delic effects, just a slight sharp­en­ing of my vision.

I think that is my biggest gripe about some of these legal highs, they never deliver the trippy punch that I am seek­ing. As much as every­one wants them to be shroom replace­ments, they’re clearly not. I wish they were!

Shrooms were so much bet­ter than every­thing else you could buy legally, they were the best trippy drug I ever enjoyed. I wish they could come back!

The cur­rent incar­na­tion of legal highs are good, I’m not knock­ing them as I do enjoy the high they pro­duce, but they are dif­fer­ent from other ille­gal highs. While com­par­isons can be made between piper­azines and MDMA, they are very dis­tinc­tive drugs.

At about 6pm yes­ter­day, I took a third pill, which to be hon­est was a bit more than I needed. It was the usual story, I hadn’t come up enough from the first two, though by 6:15pm, I finally did but I was con­cerned I might have over­done it. I did, but only as a per­sonal preference.

The third pill I took was a “Big Grin” also from Funk Pills, which has a dif­fer­ent blend to the Twisted pills and con­se­quently dif­fer­ent effects. The com­bi­na­tion was very pleas­ant; I was quite deeply monged!

I cer­tainly pre­fer the “Big Grin” to the Twisted pills as the high is much more mind-numbing. Trust me, that’s a good thing.

I peaked around 9 or 10pm and by mid­night I was still buzzing. To aid in the come­down, I drank a Dutch hot cocoa (made with a dash of but­ter and some ground hash) and took a Valer­ian. By 2am, I was sound asleep.

Today, I feel some­what lethar­gic and hun­gover, which I don’t nor­mally expe­ri­ence, but I’m attribut­ing it to the increased dose and most likely I didn’t drink enough water; though it seemed like I did at the time. I’m sure I’ll be back to nor­mal by tomor­row, but this should explain the some­what sub­dued tone this entry has taken.

I need a few spliffs and another good night’s sleep and I’ll be right as rain.

Here’s a quick blast from me before I head off for yet another fun-filled night at work.

The Inde­pen­dent news­pa­per here in the UK pub­lished an inter­est­ing arti­cle about the cur­rent pop­u­lar­ity in legal highs. Well duh!

As an early adopter and exper­i­menter with the sub­stances they men­tion, fol­low­ing the ban on shrooms last sum­mer, I’ve been on the cut­ting edge of this stuff for ages!

But do they come to ask me for a com­ment on the world of legal highs?

Do they fuck!

I guess I’m just too expen­sive for them! This hippy don’t come cheap!

It doesn’t mat­ter, I’m still happy to bring you a link to their arti­cle. The main point that mat­tered to me is that the gov­ern­ment has said they see no rea­son to review the sta­tus of any sub­stance cur­rently avail­able. That’s cool.

They also men­tion my friends at EDIT, who really are at the cut­ting edge of the mar­ket. They were big shroom-sellers up until the ban and they were quick to realise that a mar­ket con­tin­ued for legal, recre­ational sub­stances and have brought many great prod­ucts to the UK market.

After this lit­tle run of nights, I’ve got some well-deserved time off. Besides wrap­ping up work on one of my non-hippy related projects, I’m going to be check­ing out some more new prod­ucts to review for you. I’m really look­ing for­ward to get­ting off my face all in the inter­ests of improv­ing your life!

What other north Lon­don based-hippy has done that for you lately?

And that title ain’t no lie, fuckers!

I’m high as a kite; I’m as high as the sky. I’m so high, so high, SO high!

I’ve been test-driving “The Big Grin” from Funk Pills and I’m dig­ging these lit­tle fuck­ers very much. I’ll be order­ing some more of them.

I took one pill around 12:30pm and was pleas­antly sur­prised that by 1:30pm, I was feel­ing some mild, yet pro­nounced effects.

Ini­tially, I found it slightly euphoric, with a sub­tle under­tow of being mon­ged. My vision became sharper as well.

I took a sec­ond dose around 2:30pm and now it is two hours after that. It’s much more euphoric, sen­sual and uplift­ing while being more com­fort­ably mon­ged. Colours are quite vibrant, my vision is razer sharp.

I like ‘em these ones good!

The nicest thing about them is they are not speedy at all; no rac­ing heart, no rest­less­ness. You could quite eas­ily watch a film or go out and talk utter crap to strangers for hours.

I had some com­ments from a long time hip­py­fan called Mesh­man which I thought I would share with you. Here’s his mes­sage to me:

“hello mr hippy, i often pop in here and check what you are up too — wasnt happy to hear about your pur­ple ohm exp, hope you were ok in the end , how­ever i was sur­prised at you for tak­ing more than rec­om­mended — you should know better !!!!

any­ways i felt it pru­dent to dis­pel the myth that you per­pet­u­ate re :- piper­azines. They are not an extract or deriv­a­tive of any nat­ural sub­stance — they dont occur in nature at all — in fact they are more related to Via­gra than Pep­per! Piper­azines are tra­di­tion­ally used to elim­i­nate Worm infec­tions in humans — yes WORMS !!

The orig­i­nal ‘made from pep­per‘ line was spun to help ease the pos­si­ble legal­ity / accep­tance of these com­pounds when they began appear­ing in NZ as a harm reduc­tion tool. They do have a resem­blance to piperi­dine which is a con­stituent of piper­ine which is found in the black pep­per plant, hence the link.

Some info here -

http://www.shaman-australis.com.au/Website/law/Piperazine/index.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piperazine

stay safe and always fol­low the instruc­tions on the pack !!!

- mesh­man”

He’s right on every­thing he’s said. Pay atten­tion kids!

On my ill-fated Pur­ple Ohm fest, which was back in Jan­u­ary, I did indeed exceed the stated dosage, which is why I had such a bad time on them. I have copped to this before, but I don’t know if I’ve ever tried to explain.

My only expe­ri­ence with piper­azines at that point was lim­ited to PEPs and it is very com­mon for peo­ple to exceed the dosage, if what you read in forums online is any­thing to go by. It was the same with other herbal highs I had pre­vi­ously tried; to get any­where you needed to take a lot.

Piper­azines aren’t nor­mal, herbal highs! They are strong and you should all fol­low meshman’s advice and learn from my mistake!

I am hav­ing real trou­ble form­ing coher­ent sen­tences at the moment. I’m not up to my usual game. I’m mon­ged and not complaining!

Even bet­ter, when my order from EDIT came yes­ter­day, it had an extra, free sam­ple pack of Twisted (Psy­che­delic Funk). How cool is that?

I’m going to go back to being a sofa zom­bie on this fine Fri­day after­noon. I’ve just packed up my RooR mini steam­roller and I’m going to float away happy.
Don’t you all want me to be happy? Don’t you? Don’t you??