When a Sprint representative called me last month to say that they had acquired Virgin Mobile (which owned Helio, my wireless provider), I pictured a hostile takeover. Men in black masks, riot gear, tear gas, rubber bullets, a giant anthropomorphic Sprint logo brutally murdering the helpless and innocent Virgin Mobile family. That’s just how my imagination works sometimes. [I refuse to get this checked out] As it turns out, they were more like missionaries and were ready to offer something new…. something fresh…. and with a new customer discount.

For the low low price of $483 million (so says the intarweb), Sprint/Nextel became Sprint/Nextel/Virgin Mobile/Boost Mobile. Apparently, Virgin Mobile was already a minuscule part of the Sprint pie by using their network to provide MVNO service. A mobile virtual network operator is essentially a company that rents tower space from another (more awesome and profitable) wireless company. Along with the takeover, Sprint acquired hundreds of new customers ready to either keep their current services and brand names, or switch over to Sprint and get a new phone and plan with all the same discounts a true new customer would get and no fee for discontinuing our previous contracts. Pretty sweet deal, the plan I had was almost identical to an available Sprint plan and the Palm Pixi looked to be a good leap into the smart phone foray without putting too much of a dent in my wallet. Also, Sprint has all those ego-boosting commercials about how awesome their supposed “4G” network is.

At first, the Pixi was pretty spectacular. Everything was fast, smooth, and easy to use. It synced with my Facebook account and imported all my contacts automatically. It logs conversations just like an iPhone does. It doubles as an 8 MB USB drive. It’s got a touchscreen. It has all the scheduling, calendar, calculator, pdf, etc programs that you would expect on a smart phone. It even has a relatively good app store. However, right around the 30-day cutoff time to return it, were I dissatisfied, it started to slow down a bit. And now that it’s about a week too late to get a different phone free of charge, the damn thing gets stuck when doing menial tasks like trying to make a call or take a picture. Once it slows down, just to piss me off a little more, it then freezes and refuses to budge. A few more times, and I expect I’ll see the Blue Screen of Death laughing at me when I need to do something important. Also, that “4G” network I’ve heard so much about must be a myth. I’ve never even seen the 3G emblem come up on the screen.

This is a letter to you, Palm, your product sucks. It sucks just in time to have to buy another one.

        

Having been born, raised, and currently residing in Northern Virginia, I can tell you it’s a pretty solid “NO FUN” zone. It’s a rich area, and the Fairfax County Police usually seem more concerned with messing with the yutes than anything else. Thus was born a poem: I smell bacon, I smell grease, I smell Fairfax County Police. I’d always commented to friends that one of the many reasons I hope to move out of Virginia is because the laws about marijuana will probably never change. Apparently Ms Frizzle was right, never say never.

Of all the places for change to come from, Gloucester Virginia was never too high on my list. However, Delegate Harvey Morgan is pushing to reform our marijuana laws so that possession of small amounts is no longer an automatic felony. Morgan, a long-standing Republican pharmacist, is sponsoring the 2-bill overhaul of Virginia’s marijuana legislation. One would decriminalize posession and another would allow for broader use of medical marijuana. “I don’t think either one will go very far to be honest,” Morgan said Monday. “I’ve never smoked marijuana myself, but I’m a pharmacist so I feel I should be carrying this kind of legislation.” Morgan is expecting a deluge of feedback in hopes that it will trigger an adult conversation about the drug, he faces difficult obstacles in a capitol where officials freely brandish their “touch on crime” credentials. Virginians caught with over an ounce would still face the legal system, but anything less would be subject to a civil fine like a parking ticket. “I want to stress that this isn’t legalization,” he said. “There will still be a penalty, it just won’t scar you for life.”

State capitols around the US are doing their best to wrestle with marijuana laws more often than ever before. More often the efforts are focused medical marijuana to gain sympathy from voters who would not normally be for legalization of a “drug”. However, cash hungry states have looked deeper into the idea of legalization as a fund-raising tool via taxes on marijuana sales. Harvey Morgan has said that he wants Virginia to consider it because our current penalties for marijuana are way too harsh. I agree. “If you’re 18 and you get caught with even the smallest amount, it’s a felongy, and a felony will stay on your record for the rest of your life.” His secondary proposal would allow for use of marijuana as a medical treatment. Current Virginia codes, after diligent tip toeing and eggshell walking, allows cancer and glaucoma patients to use cannabis with a valid prescription from a doctor. Morgan wants sufferers of other ailments to have the option of medical marijuana.

Morgan’s second proposal would allow people with different diseases to use marijuana for treatment. Current Virginia code allows patients suffering from cancer and glaucoma to use cannabis for treatment with a valid prescription from a medical doctor. Morgan said he wants to allow people who suffer from other ailments to use marijuana for treatment.

In summary,

1. The bill would reduce minor marijuana possession penalties from a criminal misdemeanor, punishable by up to 30 days in jail, to a civil infraction punishable by a fine-only.

2. The bill would create a rebuttable presumption that a person who grows no more than five marijuana plants grows marijuana for personal use and not for distribution, an offense punishable by a $500 civil penalty. Under present law, marijuana cultivation in any amount is classified as a felony offense, punishable by between 5 and 30 years in jail and a $10,000 fine.

3. The bill removes the two-year mandatory sentence for those found guilty of the distribution of less than one ounce of marijuana. House Bill 1134 also removes the the five-year mandatory minimum sentence for those found guilty of the distribution of more than one ounce of marijuana.

4. The bill also raises the quantities necessary for punishment of possession with intent to distribute so as not to punish amounts that may be possessed for personal use.

Passage of HB 1134 would spare minor marijuana offenders from criminal arrest and incarceration, as well as the emotional and financial hardships that follow. The measure would allow also law enforcement, prosecutors, and the courts to re-allocate their existing resources toward activities that will more effectively target serious criminal behavior and keep the public safe. Please contact your state representative and urge him or her to support HB 1134. For your convenience, a pre-written (courtesy of NORML) letter will be e-mailed to your state House member when you visit here: http://capwiz.com/norml2/issues/alert/?alertid=14559191

        

Aside from having enjoyed the many medical and recreational benefits of smokin the reefer, I simply don’t want my tax dollars wasted by my government on frivolous nonsense. For instance, a very frigid department of the NIH decided that a half million dollars wasn’t too much money to figure out why men prefer to not use a condom during sex. Mr Hats’ answer is that it’s the same reason I take my mail-order bride out of the plastic bag before eating her; it’s more awesome that way. That’s $423,500 that could have been spent in far better places, like research in to vaccines and cures for sexually transmitted diseases. Unfortunately, the Kinsey Institute for Research in Sex, Gender and Reproduction needed some extra greenbacks to fund their kegger/orgy that month and were awarded the extensive grant. “This project aims to advance our understanding of, among other factors, the role of cognitive and affective processes and condom application skills in explaining problems with condom use in young, heterosexual adult men,” reads an excerpt of the study, which will be funded through May 2011. Using the magical powers of copy/paste, I’ve found that the first phase is to ask men about various issues of arousal and sensation, including physical experience and perceptions about condoms. Then, they’ll perform a laboratory study about those same damn questions, in an effort to presumably make condoms less like fat free rice cakes and more like delicious cotton candy.

        

Something wicked this way comes. It’s called the future. A few items of note:

California Confuses Lawmen Everywhere: If you plan on dining at any point after 01/01/10, your meal should be at least a little bit healthier. The state of California made it ILLEGAL on New Year’s Day to use trans-fat. The gender confused fat is most often seen in fried/pre-packaged foods and is linked to high cholesterol, obesity and heart disease. Fines for breaking the new law range from $25 to a whopping $1000. On the flip side, Marijuana is de facto legal but the laws surrounding the new cash crop are incredibly… gray.

Russia Apparently Made 9/11 Monument: This has nothing to do with 2010, but I’d not heard of it until now. Apparently, Zurab Tsereteli was “struck by an outpouring of grief” and had an image of a tear formed in his mind. He then visited ground zero in NY and looked to New Jersey’s waterfront for an appropriate location to place a memorial. Bayonne was chosen as it was a staging area for rescuers and offers a direct line-of-sight view of the Statue of Liberty. The monument, known as the “Tear of Grief” or “To The Struggle Against World Terrorism” was dedicated on 9/11/06. Water continuously flows over the tear as if it is physically weeping.

Washington Redskins (’nuff said): I will preface this with the fact that I am NOT a sports fan. I’ve watched a few (possibly 2) football games in their entirety. Baseball, golf, curling, horseracing, nascar, indy racing, and many other sports bore the hell out of me. I do enjoy watching hockey, but I’m never able to pay attention to where the damn puck is. I’ve physically attended 2 or 3 DC United soccer games (for tailgating and all the food/booze that entails), and I was in Slovakia in 2004 watching the World Cup with some very avid sports fans. However, being a native and current resident of northern Virginia, I can safely say that something needs to happen with the Washington Redskins. The most recent coach, Jim Zorn, went from inspiring such tshirts as Horny for Zorny to being fired after only 2 years. This adds Zorn to the long list of people hired and fired by marketing wiz and Redskins owner Daniel Snyder. Aside from going thru coaches like an unbalanced drug addict, Snyder also decided on the most admirable approach to economy-shat-on citizens who could not longer afford their season tickets… sue the shit out of them.

Sensational Media and Yellow Journalism Kick Ass in America: A long time ago, back in the dark ages before the internet (when we used to go outside), news was made up of NEWS. These were newsworthy articles and reports made by newsworthy people in newsworthy times. Nowadays, the most interesting thing on the news is how many mistresses Tiger Woods has or how delicious the Jon & Kate + 8 kids are. What I find hilarious, is that my generation relies more heavily on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart and The Colbert Report for our daily news than we do on actual news programs. I’ll quote Michael Swaim from Cracked.com on that very subject: “And the fact that most of our elders call us “the worst generation” for relying on a comedy program for our news, while we call them “the insanest generation” for creating an environment in which a comedy program is one of the more reliable sources of news, seems like one of the more interesting conflicts of the decade.” On top of that, Jersey Shore seems to be the most sought after entertainment program by the generation that will inherit the earth just after mine… Terrifying. [On a side note: I find it hilarious that some Italian-Americans are calling the show racist. It's a "reality" show. They don't find actors to act like idiots. They find idiots to act like idiots.]

China is Taking Over the World: Joss Whedon certainly thought so. The back story for his short lived Firefly series stated that America and China were the only 2 surviving cultures, allowing for the Chinese language to be his own MacGuffin whenever a character needed to use some frakking profanity. Back in reality, China and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations or ASEAN launched one of the world’s largest regional trade areas at the beginning of 2010. The new free zone will allow for trade between China and the 6 initial ASEAN members: Brunei, Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore and Thailand at a reduced tax rate. Accountants suggest that the new zone would involve a trade volume of around a monumental 4.5 trillion dollars. In order to topple Japan and the US in the next industrial revolution, the Chinese government has gathered roughly 454 billion dollars to invest in the renewable energy sector such as wind and solar power. As if we need more items in our households with those little gold “MADE IN CHINA” stickers. Even their lawmakers are catching on, recently passing a law to force the electricity grid operators to purchase all power from renewable sources even if fossil standards are cheaper. Finally, the annual World Expo historically brings great economic growth to the host city. The host for 2010: Shanghai, China

In addition, there are no flying cars, the Segway is the laughing stock of the transportation industry, no colonies have been erected on either the moon or Mars, jet packs have not been made logical or affordable, the space industry isnt quite… the space industry yet, and stupid people are still allowed to procreate.

        

In late October, I submitted the below article to the Washington Post’s “America’s Next Great Pundit” contest. I did not qualify. So, here’s the 400 words or less article that I submitted. I think it’s pretty good, but probably could have been better (as I didn’t qualify). Let me know what you think in the comments. Suggestions? Changes? etc…

One logical and ethical solution to the prodigious resources devoted to the “drug war” is the recognition of each person’s sovereignty over his or her own body. A logical conclusion is that the “drug war” was originally started as a smoke screen for something barely even related to whether or not cannabis should be legal in the United States.

In the early 1930s, hemp was the new “wonder crop” poised to beat out paper as a basic raw material. Wealthy industrialists, seeing their cash cow threatened, started a smear campaign against marijuana saying that hemp was being used by the evil drug traffickers as a source of supply. Scientists now know that marijuana and hemp are quite different, the latter having essentially none of the chemicals to get you high.

When our country was first set up, as a bastion of freedom, even George Washington was pretty sure that marijuana was remarkable. He instructed his farm hands to “make the most you can of the Indian hemp seed. Sow it everywhere.” Thomas Jefferson also cultivated cannabis and Ben Franklin used hemp to create paper in his newly designed paper mill. Yet today, precious tax dollars are taken out of my paycheck every Friday and I’m guessing at least a small percentage go to fund an anti-pot ad on television or something else to further the drug war. Those who support drug prohibition are some of the greatest friends that drug cartels could ever have. We learned this lesson before in the days of alcohol prohibition and it took actual amendments to our Constitution to clear that up. Why is marijuana so different?

As a citizen of this great nation, it pains me to know that my terrible cigarette habit is both detrimental to my health and perfectly legal. On the flop, a plant that roughly 57% of Americans have at least tried and the medical community is starting to recognize is only now gaining fervent popularity, but remains illegal in all forms in roughly 80% of our land. Rather than stringent prohibition, we need effective regulation. Legalize it, regulate it, tax the hell out of it, whatever works. Just, move the great eye of Big Brother elsewhere. I am perfectly happy paying taxes, as long as they go to good causes. Education, greener technology, health care… even making the Redskins a viable team. Not drug prohibition.