An Open Letter to the Marijuana Community

South Park put it best, that more than likely the worst thing that's going to happen to anyone smoking pot is absolutely nothing, that its worst effect is making you alright with being bored. On the whole, I don't care if people want to get high by way of the cannabis; it's no different than any other vice or addiction, be it liquor, tobacco, caffeine, sex, roller coasters, or videogames to name a few. What matters is whether you're in control of your habit, or it's in control of you. Either way, those on the pro-marijuana side of the issue, we need to have a talk.

Here's an encounter I had with a neighbor some years back as I was on my way to work.

Him: Hey.
Me: Howdy.
Him: Say, do you know where I can get some pot?
Me: No, I don't.
Him: You don't?
Me: Nope.
Him: Why not?!
Me: Because I don't do pot.
Him: But you have long hair!
Me: That doesn't mean anything.
Him: Whatever.

The funny part of that story is that he had a crew cut. The really funny part is that I was clean-shaven, wearing a dress shirt, and spoke without a hint of a slur. The sad part is he asked me again a few weeks later. The sadder part is that in the meantime, he would condescendingly yell, "Hippie!" at me from his balcony as I walked out to my car. The worst part is that I have to live in the same building as this guy, this guy who now harbors an irrational resentment toward me because he believes I lied to him and then added insult to injury by pointing out the fault in his ability to sort people out by appearance. As I've implied, I think the illegal status of marijuana is an arbitrary double standard, but situations like what I've described haven't exactly endeared me to stand by you guys in your campaign.

I know you don't keep any sort of census or roster and it's utterly unfair of me to hold you all accountable for the actions of a few bad eggs. That said, it's no use playing dumb, either. It's also not going to do you any good to see your campaign as a black-and-white issue. Look, I don't like being lumped in with those pro-active/social anti-drug people with their lame slogans and ineffective ad campaigns, and I know you probably don't like being lumped in with the people I'm describing, the ones who can't comprehend that people who choose not to get high aren't always looking down their noses at them. I have no problem taking that step to seeing that the stereotypical "stoner" is archaic, sensationalized, and largely inaccurate, that correlation is not causation. So, why are you holding onto it? Why am I being profiled by way of only-partially fitting an image you know doesn't fully or properly represent you?

Seriously, at the risk of sounding like I'm making fun of you, with all the colors you can smell and music you can see, if you're still seeing things in black-and-white, then maybe you should lay off the pot; clearly, it's not expanding your consciousness or broadening your mind as much as you want other people to believe. Just because I'm not a help to you doesn't mean I'm a hindrance by default.

I don't want "NO means NO!" to become the new "Just say NO!" and I doubt any of you do, either.

So, like I said, I don't want to write off the Cannabis Community as a wastrels and a cancer upon civilization, but you need to respect a few ground rules if you want to be treated like responsible adults that can usher in a change in policy, namely that, even if I did partake in recreational drugs, I'm under no obligation to keep you appraised of this fact and that your habits are ultimately your responsibility and yours alone. If you do have to ask, and the answer is no, take the hint.

Happy 420, and to crib a phrase from a wise man,

Just go forward in all your beliefs, and prove to me that I am not mistaken in mine.

P.S. Oh, one more "ground rule" before we part: Would you please stop using famous artists like The Beatles, The Doors, Pink Floyd, The Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin, and others as "case studies" for why marijuana should be legalized? Creativity isn't a substance you can breath in as smoke or bake into a brownie or inject into your veins or put under your tongue, and last time I looked, no one in any of those bands ever said otherwise. Besides, if that were the case, there'd be a lot more White Albums out there.

Peace and bacon grease.

I Blame You, Kim Kardashian!

(Actually, no, that's as true to the topic on hand as it is fair to her.)

I rarely keep up with any reality shows. In fact, the only one I ever liked and watched consistently was the original Joe Millionaire. As for the others like Big Brother, Survivor, or anything with Celebrity in the title, I really couldn't care less. Then again, there are reality SHOWS, and there are reality SERIES, and the latter does hold a bit of interest for me. Bear in mind, this distinction is almost completely arbitrary, but I'll try and qualify it. A reality show like America's Next Top Model is essentially a game show where contestants compete for a grand prize, the "reality" aspect referring mostly to co-habitation during filming. Meanwhile, a reality series like The Osbournes is more straightforward, a condensed glimpse into the daily life of The Prince of Darkness, his wife Sharon, and two of their three kids. There's no prize, very little structure, and casting is irrelevant because it's about a family and their close friends, not some cross-section of living stereotypes hand-picked to appeal to various key demographics.
I loved The Osbournes, but just like Joe Millionaire, I thought I'd seen the best the format had to offer. Suddenly, along comes Keeping Up With The Kardashians, which, in a manner similar to The Osbournes, seems to have sprung from an episode of MTV's Cribs. I won't go into details about the show itself as most of you are probably more familiar than you want to be with this (in)famous family. Instead, I want to focus on a particular event involving the show's centerpiece (second, in my book, behind Bruce Jenner), Kim Kardashian, and her mother. I'm working from dead reckoning as it's been a good three years since I saw this episode and I don't feel like sifting back through the various seasons to try and find it again (Thank you, Netflix), so I may get most of the details and context wrong, but the meat and potatoes of the situation will be otherwise unseasoned.
The family Kardashian had gone up to the mountains for a family ski trip, with matriarch Kris strictly emphasizing the "family" aspect of the sojourn. This led to an incident in which bratty Kim's cell phone was taken away and potentially damaged in the process. This led Kim to take Kris' phone and throw it from the upstairs loft onto the living room floor, all under the premise of, in her own words, "Treat others as you want to be treated."

If your reaction to this is anything along the lines of, "That's not really what that phrase means." then congratulations are in order as you are officially in the other 10% of Sturgeon's Law. Granted, I don't expect Kim Kardashian to be any sort of sage authority on how to implement The Golden Rule in daily life, but there's a difference between Karl Popper's addendum (the Platinum Rule, as it's been called) or Kant's Categorical Imperative, and an outright contradiction. The justification for this petty squabble isn't just circular logic, it's outright bent, and it seems more people are walking that crooked road in defiance of all the situations wherein most of us probably heard that phrase (especially if you grew up with siblings).

Fast-forward a few years to a few days ago when I happen upon this comment from a YouTube user on her own profile:

"Treat others the way you want to be treated. I give back what people throw at me, negative or postive (sic)."

Let's forgo the formalities and just break this idiocy down mathematically:

If A = B and B = C, then A = C.

Let's make the first sentence A and the second sentence B, as the person who said this wants this phrase taken as one cohesive and equitable whole.

"Treat others the way you want to be treated." = "I give back what people throw at me, negative or positive."

However, what shall be C? How about we take B and use synonyms to make a new phrase that retains the same meaning, but with a different vocabulary. Actually, for the sake of fairness to this person, let's pattern the vocabulary for C after the one used for A, that of treating others. Since positive and negative have the same value, that won't need any qualifications, so let's focus on converting "giving and throwing" to "treating."

"Treat others as others treat you."

Sounds close enough, though it seems we're bypassing A's conceit of "how one WANTS to be treated" as opposed to "how one IS treated by others." Hold on, we may be on to something:

"Treat others as YOU WOULD HAVE others treat you." = "Treat others as others treat you."

Well, that doesn't sound right. Seems A actually has relative degree of self-sufficiency compared to our newfound C, given that C involves giving back what's thrown in the first place, whereas A simply needs an awareness of what one would prefer be thrown at them. This sounds more like Newton's third law of physics, where actions have equal but OPPOSITE reactions.

Given this, we can deduce that A does not equal C, or A ≠ C. If anything, A is the opposite of C, just as a positive 1 is the opposite of a negative 1, and 1 ≠ -1.

Wait, now, if that's the case, then how can B = C and, per our initially given statement, A = B? The answer is that it can't, and the only way A ≠ C and B = C is if A ≠ B.

"Treat others the way you want to be treated." ≠ "I give back what people throw at me, negative or positive."

Treating others as they treat you is not treating others as you want to be treated. It's modifying your own behavior to match the actions of another, adjusting your reaction to match another's action, effectively removing yourself and your autonomy from the social situation in favor of being another's mirror.

So can we please stop pretending that being mean or unkind to someone is not only giving them what you feel they deserve, but what they may actually want? If that's the case, then how do you expect them to treat you how you wanted to be treated in the first place? You don't have to be a doormat, but you don't have to be a shadow to someone else just to interact with them. Failing that, just be yourself.

Work Ethic Quick Notes

I don't know how long I spent writing Ladyhorse.

My re-write of The Sacrifice was done in a sitting, a rather arduous one. The original 1999 (98?) version was written in a single session as well, and I remember it coming to me very easily.

The story I'm writing now, which is not part of NaNoWriMo since it's only a short, began around November 1st, maybe earlier, with a deadline of Thanksgiving (so it's earlier than NaNoWriMo), and that's turning out to be one of the most difficult things I've ever written. I'm quite literally not happy with any of it. I think the problem is that while I stand behind the idea itself, the story requires too much simile and metaphor to work at conveying its imagery, and that can get a little too flowery for me.

The closest thing to a novel I've written was a five-act play written around 1998. It took me 2 years to write, longer if you count the 50-plus scraps that were eventually consolidated into the work, making for its 75-plus main characters. I'm never posting it or showing it to anybody. I'd rather tell the story of how I got the idea to consolidate the stories, because it is kind of hilarious (and I can say that because it wasn't my idea):

These stories were all set in relatively the same universe, and I had envisioned a kind of crossover culminating in a singular ending (I'll just say one word about it: Dallas), but only thought of that ending, nothing about the interaction of the separate characters. One day, I was in the school library, writing a story of a soldier becoming a doctor. A friend (of sorts) walked by and asked what I was doing. I told him I was writing. He asked, "Fiction?"
"Yeah," I replied, "And it's going about as well as the other stuff I've written." He looked interested, and said as much, with the prospect of being able to offer me advice since he'd written much himself. I told him that the problem with how I write is that I always have an idea of a beginning, and I more or less know how I want the story to end, but it's making the connection between the start and stop that gets to me. Believing he knew where I was going, he nodded and finished my sentence:
"Because you always want to introduce new characters, new situations."
I shook my head, "No, it's not so much that...." I stopped that sentence dead in its tracks after realizing that his complaint made for really good advice. I asked, "What did you just say?" like one of those Mel Brooks moments where you first dismiss or even laugh at an idea, but the moment you speak your dissent is the same moment you realize it's complete genius:
"Maybe we should send the dummies into battle."
"Ha!" One one-thousand, "Hmm...."

The best advice I ever got about writing came from my Western Civilization professor during my freshman year at UNM. He said that the first sentence of your essay (or anything you're writing, for that matter) should sound like it has absolutely nothing to do with what the paper is about. It's kind of hard to elaborate on what exactly that means or entails, but here's the best example I can think of, the opening sentence to John Wyndham's Day of the Triffids:

When a day that you happen to know is Wednesday starts off by sounding like Sunday, there is something seriously wrong somewhere.

The novel, for those of you who don't know, is about ambulatory, carnivorous plants with venomous tongues that have a ten-foot reach and target the eyes, yet those are not the worst thing going on in the world when the story starts.