It's No Secret

 

It's not a secret that I hide from anyone.  It's just a matter of fact.  A part of the lifestyle I choose to live, these days.  Years ago, before it was formally legalized, I would partake in the consumption of marijuana on a extremely part time basis.  If a friend had some, we'd share a joint.  Later on, I found a supplier and decided to do my own experimentation.

I suffer from seasonal depression.  It's something I've battled for more years than I can count.  Not something that my family or closest peers were ever aware of.  I'm not an idiot, doing my due diligence before moving forward and learning that cannabis can reduce or even eliminate depression.  So that first winter, I smoked whenever I was feeling down and it perked me right up.  Sadly, the more I learned about cannabis, the more I realized that my "supplier" knew nothing.  When I made my last purchase from him, I asked if it was a Sativa or an Indica strain and he blankly looked at me and told me he didn't know what either of those words meant. 

Sativa is the strain that perks you up and Indica is the strain that mellows you the f**k out.  Easiest way to remember is what I learned from the comedian, Doug Benson, who quoted "Indica is like 'in-da-couch'."

In the end, I'm not sure what it was that I received from the "supplier", but rest assured, the depression was suppressed.  So imagine my joy when marijuana was legalized in Canada.  The ease of walking into a legitimate business and conducting myself in an open manner.  Plus, now dealing with people who not only know the good and bad effects of the merchandise they're selling.  Nowadays, I'm able to customize the effects that I hope to achieve upon consumption.  Back in the old days, it was like spinning the tumbler on a six-shooter in a game of Russian Roulette.  Spark up and hope for the best.  One night, as I recall, I was quite gleeful, as I cooked up about 2lbs of bacon and consumed it all.  Another time, I got horribly sick, almost like I'd had an allergic reaction.  I couldn't function for about a week. 

These days, I choose to go the route of vaping the cannabis.  It's easier and more compact.  I don't have to empty the chamber and clean my unit every time I wish to smoke dried product as I do with my one device, but simply screw the vape cartridge into the battery I purchased and I'm off to the races.

Gone are the munchies, although I do keep a supply of snacks on hand that require little, if any, effort to prepare, so there's no danger of burning down my house.  No more anxiety or depression.  All that is left is relaxation, happy times and a flurry of ideas and expressions.  The stuff that makes me laugh like an idiot, I often will share to Facebook and Twitter.  Share my idiocy with the world, hoping that no one will steal any of it.

Sadly, there is also a downside...  It's nothing dangerous, mind you, but simply inconvenient.  Prime example is last night.  I was inspired to write a genius blog.  I had the introduction written in my head.  I had many musings and references to make and even a title, which is usually the most difficult factor to come up with, aside from subject matter.  I'd consumed just enough cannabis to know, however, that I was unable to write anything last night, for fear it'd come out like gibberish.  Even now, I question how legitimate this blog sounds, and I'm 100% clean and sober and the moment.

I'm not afraid to admit to smoking dope.  It's not illegal.  Hell, cannabis, despite all the idiot warning labels that the government imposes onto packaging, marijuana is not dangerous to your health.  Cannabis is a necessary tool that I use to escape my demons and depression.  That is all.  Well....  It IS fun, too.  I won't lie about that.

Lacklustre

In 2015, comedian Doug Benson issued himself a mission of watching 365 movies in 365 days.  An avid moviegoer and host of a popular podcast entitled, "Doug Loves Movies", watching so many movies should come easy, but given all of his duties of constantly traveling the continent from one ocean to the other and back, in addition to two or three podcasts, achieving this lofty goal was tough, and he came close to failure, squeaking in the last film on the last day of the year.  For 2016, he's not trying this feat, but challenged his fans to the challenge.  I'm not nearly as busy as Doug, not by a long shot, but I figured I'd give myself a goal of 250 movies to watch in 2016.  I figured I could swing four movies a week, for fifty-two weeks, which totaled 208, which I rounded up to an even 250.  As of this date, I've managed 53 movies, the last being "The Magnificent Seven", the poster pictured above.

The Magnificent Seven was rated FOUR STARS out of four and starred major Hollywood stars of the day, Yul Brynner, Steve McQueen, Charles Bronson, James Coburn, and Robert Vaughn, with an additional two nobodies to round out the seven.  Eli Wallach co-starred as the main villain.  The film was produced in 1960 and was an updated old-west remake of Akira Kurosawa's 1954 classic "The Seven Samarai", which was filmed in Japanese.

In comparison to the films being produced in that era, I do suppose the movie deserved the high ratings, but as I've been watching a wide variety of films in an effort to achieve my own movie challenge in 2015, I've found that many of the movies of the era, which received high praise, really aren't that good.  Quite dreadful, in fact.  "Lawrence of Arabia" is one such movie, receiver of many Oscar nominations and awards, also considered to be a FOUR STAR movie, was really really bad.  At just short of four hours in length, I believe a good hour to an hour-and-a-half could have been shaved off the film, which would make it better.  The movie spent about 45 minutes establishing the back story of why the titular character, British Lieutenant T.E. Lawrence (played by Peter O'Toole) was sent to Arabia.  It was quite boring, wasteful and elaborate in it's telling of who he pissed off enough to send him to the desert.  Who gives a shit?!?  The same information could have been translated in a five minute flashback as Lawrence was roasting his ass in the hot desert heat.

Another film that I wasted my time watching, was the original Ocean's Eleven, which starred Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Billy Bishop and Sammy Davis Jr., to name a few.  The film was rated as FOUR STARS but never addressed the big heist until after an hour into the film.  Then the whole caper took less than the remaining sixty minutes.  Absolutely dreadful.  The 2001 remake, which starred the likes of Clooney, Pitt, Damon, Roberts and many more, scored only a measly TWO out of FOUR stars, but was a kick ass movie.

Some of the old classics, really aren't so classic.

As I stated, I watched "The Magnificent Seven" Thursday afternoon and I'm thinking that the word MAGNIFICENT must have had an alternate meaning in 1960, because the movie was anything but magnificent.  It seemed like the first half of the movie was Yul Brynner's character roaming about town looking for six or seven men willing to fend off evil marauders in a small Mexican town for the whopping sum of $20 for six weeks work.  I'm not certain when the film supposedly takes place, but $20 seems a very peckish price for putting one's life on the line for helpless villagers.

There was a remake made in 1998 which starred Ron Pearlman, Eric Close, and Michael Biehn which did so well, nobody remembers it.  There's also another remake scheduled for a September 2016 release, directed by Antoine Fuqua (known for Training Day, Shooter, & most recently Southpaw), and starring Denzel Washington, Chris Pratt, Ethan Hawke and Vincent D'Onofrio.  I don't know if it'll be better, but given who's in it and the man in the director's chair, I'd say it has a really good chance of being good.  ...And likely, violent as a motherf*cker.  I've got my fingers crossed that this updated version will earn the title of "magnificent".

Smoke & Mirrors - Chapter Four: Coping Mechanisms

I did a lot of homework before I bought my truck in 2008.  I wanted bang for my buck.  I wanted to get as much as I possibly could for one price.  Initially, I was going to buy the Honda CRV, crossover, but I read that the vehicle didn't offer much by way of good gas mileage.  Then I considered the Ford Escape Hybrid, but read that if taken on the highway, the fuel consumption was higher than the V6 model.  Then I set my sights on the Honda Ridgeline pick-up truck.  The gas mileage was great.  It was a unibody, it rides great.  It's all the comforts of a car, including a trunk located in the box.  It had a lot of umph!  Get up and go.  I test drove the Ridgeline a number of times, then when the day came to buy, I went into the dealership, knowing exactly what I wanted, and called out "no bullshit".  My research was so precise that when I requested the gold accents on the logo and name placard, I knew the order code.

So what does this have to do with coping with stress, anxiety and depression?  I'll get to that eventually.  My point is this.  I don't do hardly anything without looking into every possible avenue.  I want that umph.  I want the most bang for my buck.  I want to tackle everything efficiently.  And I feel I have.

As stated in Chapter One, I suffer from something that I call "Seasonal Depression".  I've never formally been diagnosed by my physician for depression, but I'm not a f*cking idiot.  If it looks like a duck and it quacks like a duck, there's a 99% chance (+/- 1%) that it's a f*cking duck!  So if for more than ten years I've been gloomy, sad and depressed from Halloween through to just after my mom and sister's birthday's, chances are I suffer from depression.

This year I decided to try something new.  I began listening to online podcasts about a year and a half ago, with a majority of it culminating in the last year.  I listen to a great many different podcasters, of whom include, Adam Corolla, Kevin Smith & Scott Mosier, Ari Shaffir, Joe Rogan, and I especially like Bert Kreischer (though I constantly f*ck up the spelling of his name) and Doug Benson.

In addition to his love of movies, Doug Benson is a notorious pot smoker, and like Joe Rogan, promotes the positive medicinal attributes that marijuana provides.  The more I listened, the more I began to wonder.  I wondered if smoking marijuana would improve my "seasonal depression", so I set forth to do my due diligence.  I researched the f*ck out of the benefits of smoking marijuana and any negatives that it might create.  After all, inhaling smoke is not a naturally occurring phenomena, although the first nations people have been smoking different plants in their rituals for hundreds or even thousands of years, so... Who knows?

Everything I read on the subject reflected nothing but positivity, zero negatives, other than putting on a few pounds.  So I moved forward with this "experiment" and yes.  I'm coming out in this chapter of this blog series, that I smoke pot, but just for the medicinal purposes.  I'm not a daily smoker.  I only use it as needed.  I've not used any in a couple of weeks, and the effects of not using have been tremendous.  I've been sad and depressed for more than a week.  My friend made a remark the other day and it broke my heart.  I was truly hurt.  That's my downfall.  I can seem fine, then one off remark can send me spiraling and it's every ounce of courage to regain my composure.  The remark was in reference to my blogs, my subject matter and though they were enjoyable, they were equally inappropriate.  We've made amends, not that we were squabbling, but it's taken me every shred of confidence and will to dig myself out of this hole I find myself in.  I think this is, in part, due to my not medicating myself.  I have a lot of stress on my shoulders.  Unemployment being one.  Health issues are in the back of my mind.  Loneliness, despite having a cat, is still loneliness.

Since starting this new chapter of smoking pot, I've found it beneficial in overcoming most of my "seasonal depression", the migraines that plague me throughout the colder months have been VERY few and far between, which I relish immensely, and much to my surprise, my asthma has improved, as well.  I usually have to rely on one inhaler a month (roughly) to combat my breathing issues.  During the more frequent usage of marijuana, my asthma was not an issue, hardly.  Maybe a puff every other day.  Put it this way.  I got an inhaler just before Christmas, and I'm still on the same inhaler more than a month later.  In recent weeks, with the decline of smoking, I've had to rely on it a little more, but it's still pretty impressive I think.

So I did my homework and got the best truck for me.  I did my homework and got the best television SmartTV, that I could get.  And I did my research to learn that marijuana in addition to a plethora of other advantages, also quashes my depression.  I don't know why it's illegal.  I really don't.

A Flood of Tears for the Posthumously Missed

Q:  Do I wanna see the new Russell Crowe movie?!?

A: NOAH!!!

My reasoning for not wanting to see this movie, stems (in part) from the commercial for the film on television. Crowe warns to his family, "There's a storm coming and there's nothing we can do to stop it!!!"  This statement implies that somewhere sometime, people were or will be able to stop rainstorms from coming.  That's f*cking retarded.  If movies didn't cost so much to see in the theater, I'd almost want to pay to see it, just to pick it apart.  Perhaps this would be better subject matter for Doug Benson's "Movie Interruption".

I made this claim at work today, stating that I didn't want to see the film because of this ridiculous warning from the Noah character, to which I was met with an equally retarded reply.  "That's alright." a workmate replied, "The movie is historically inaccurate, anyway."

There was a  great and silent pause following this accusation.  I realize that I work with a lot (and I do mean A LOT) of religious people, but in this day and age, in the year 2014, for someone to believe whole-heartedly that the bible is an accurate history book, blows my f*cking mind.  This is just plain preposterous to me.  So much so, that the only response I could muster up through the bewildered look plastered upon my face, was a low-toned, "What?"

"The movie is historically inaccurate." the man begun.  I cracked a smile, but I saw that he was serious, so I bit my tongue in an effort to avoid laughter.  "From the size of the boat, to his sons wives and.., blah blah blah."  He continued to point out the movies flaws, having not seen it, I might add.  I chose, however, to tune him out to avoid breaking out in a boisterous laugh.  I'm not one who is religious.  Like I said before, in this day and age.., I find it difficult to understand why so many people put so much of their faith in a book that reads like a book of fables.  With all the advancements in science and technology, people still believe that an invisible man in the clouds created all that we see.  Bullshit!!!  But, some folks need a crutch for when all logic escapes them.  So whatever...  Not for me to pass judgement, although it reads like I am.

So to make light of the heavy situation, I interrupted by adding, "And how do they expect us to believe that two of EVERY SPECIES on the planet, conglomerated at that one meeting spot and ALL fit on this boat?  Then they expect us to believe that the animals all cohabitated without incident.  The carnivores never fed on the smaller animals?"  I was dumbfounded, once more with his response.  "Oh no!  That part of the story is true." Again, I found myself bewildered by the statement and able to only muster up a one-word response, preceded only by a deep groan, "Uhhhh... What?!?"

"All the animals that exist today are cross-bred in one way or another.  That part is true.  What isn't true is all the little details.  Hollywood has a way of changing things up just to make a buck.  Hollywood would never put out a historically accurate movie about Noah or any of the bible stories."

By this time, the whistle blew, ending our coffee break.  Everyone filed out of the break room, leaving me alone to replay the conversation in my mind.  It was at that point I knew I had to address this retardation.  Later I joked about it with another workmate and it was through those comments, I knew I had fuel for this fire, but I needed an angle.

"They [Noah] got two of every animal, but they never got Unicorns." my workmate, C___ joked.  I thought about that for a second, and realized.  Yeah!  Noah was able to get two of every animal on the planet, including a male and a female Sasquatch, yet they couldn't fit two Unicorns on-board.  Then I realized what had actually happened.  It's clarity overcame my ever waking thoughts and for me to deprive these thoughts from the masses would most certainly be a crime against humanity.  A crime of such magnitude that it equates the crime that Noah and his family bestowed upon all of mankind for the centuries that would follow.

As the rains poured down and impending doom was facing our heroes who were corralling all of "God's creatures" upon this mighty wooden vessel, the last to board were the Unicorns.  Alas, however, in his complex calculations (which apparently have nothing to do with science and mathematics, but of God's divine will), shelter was not provided to the Unicorns.  Noah's family, not knowing how long they would be floating about on the S.S. Ark, ate the Unicorn.  It's as simple as that.

Even in the time of the "big flood", people knew that when they ate corn, that corn came out in their shit, fully intact.  Unicorn has the word CORN right in it.  Putting two and two together, these simple-minded people, thought that if they ate the unicorn, that they could shit out a fully intact unicorn.  Kind of like the Jesus-bread, where they were able to feed the starving masses with a single loaf of bread.  Retarded, yes, "but it's the bible, so it's historically accurate," I type tongue-in-cheek.

Not to mention the Unicorn's single horn, mounted proudly upon their brow, was (at the time) a known aphrodisiac, and if Noah and his family were to re-inhabit the Earth, they were going to need every ounce of help they could muster to keep themselves in the mood.  There was going to be a need for a whole lot of sexy time.  Not to mention that after forty days and forty nights on an ark, surrounded by (nearly) every animal on the planet, neither man or woman was going to appear (or smell) very appealing.  Hell, I've seen people's looks fade after a long weekend camping trip.  Yech!!!

Noah (allegedly) saved the plight of the platypus, the elephant seal, and even the fabled Sasquatch/Yeti, but ate the f*cking unicorns.  Will this aspect of the great flood story be depicted in the new Russell Crowe movie?  F*CK NO!!!  Haven't you heard?  The movie is historically inaccurate.