The Green Revolution

I slapped myself on the forehead at the end of the president's speech tonight, when Barack Obama said America should pray. Velvet reminded me that Religion has been a successful political tool in the past.

I continue to be reminded of Cat's Cradle. I'm just to the part where John the Narrator becomes President of San Lorenzo but "Papa" hasn't slid into the ocean with a sliver of Ice Nine consequently turning the world into a swirling shit storm. The current situation has similar existential absurdity because a president inherits an environmental disaster of global proportions which is caused by military greed and insensitivity to humanity. And as in San Lorenzo, there is a symbiotic relationship between Church and State.

Now that we are officially going green, I'm turning my attention away from mineral rights around the world to legalization of marijuana for recreational use. I figure with this much shit going on, We The People might as well be able to get high without threat of arrest - especially since it apparently reeks of weed down my hallway all the way to the elevator.

When Cupcake came over this evening, I ushered her conspiratorially into the apartment asking if it smelled like weed in the hall. She acknowledged that it did, and visibly relaxed at my moderate show of affection. I don't want the girl to feel awkward. She slept in Velvet's room last night while Velvet slept on the couch. Since I have extensive experience with awkward domestic situations, I felt it was incumbent upon me to set her at ease.

The immediate task at hand was the reeking hallway. I fell to work sauteing onions in olive oil and herbs de provence. I learned from Granny the Ho that when you saute onions it smells like you've been cooking all day even though maybe you were out playing golf. Onions and Herbs adequately covered the smell of weed in the hall, and I threw the leftover rice from yesterday's Chinese food into the pan with some frozen green beans from Trader Joe's. But it sucks that I shouldn't be allowed to smoke weed in my own home. It also sucks that kids who can vote and go into the military can't drink beer.

If religion is being overtly handed to us as an opiate, then the prohibition regarding weed for recreational use and hemp for industrial use must be lifted. Hemp deserves equal time with the church, and in my mind, it's a better opiate anyway. I'll smoke weed; I won't go to church. Although I'm skeptical at best about the power of prayer, it beats being instructed to shop for America. Further, you never know -- focusing our collective positivity onto the Gulf could benefit the planet. Lifting the prohibition on recreational and industrial hemp is a more concrete form of action, and as a rule, I'm a lot more positive when I'm high.

For the moment, I'm most interested in legalizing recreational marijuana because I don't want Velvet to get busted. I wouldn't want to get busted myself. While recreational use is still illegal, it's important to maintain an atmosphere of plausible deniability, and crucial to avoid giving police an opportunity to declare "Probable Cause." I'm modeling these behaviors for Velvet as I prepare him for living in the world.

The Green Revolution is incomplete without ending the prohibition on marijuana.