Escape the Okie Zone

"SEATTLE — A dog that ran off from its owner in Seattle's Seward Park found and ate some marijuana and got high. Owner Jen Nestor Waddell told KING-TV the 11-year-old black Lab mix named Jack was "just stoned" May 12 after they returned home from the park. The dog's eyes glossed over and he had trouble walking.
The vet said Jack had swallowed a large amount of dried, harvested marijuana. After some medication to induce vomiting and a night of rest Jack was back to normal.
Waddell told police about the drugs and joked they could borrow Jack to find them if they paid the $1,500 vet bill."

I think that a lot of the time, my life has been a continual comedy of errors...
I resign myself to be just the weird bloke at the end of the bar...
folks often look at me as soon as they get to know me as either goofy or one string missing in a tennis racquet...
I have to just be that more careful now that I have a son to take care of..
I have to take responsibility and not let myself fall into the roll of goofy as so many expect me to be...

=

I feel when my sweetheart and I get it together, we will be able to enjoy life even more...

we will get the right help and the right meds for our minds to process more efficiently..

we will be more relaxed and get into the joie de vivre!!

I wonder if this roller coaster ride of my life could be documented and the crazy's names changed to protect the guilty...
It's weird how the screen appears to be almost following my life...
Or I have these wonderful ideas for screenplays...
and lately they've been put into movies...
Is somebody in Hollywood reading this blog??

I wanna escape to Byron Bay again...
meet other travellers who also want to escape and just enjoy life...
Mateo travels from Venezia, Italy working hard in the factories for 4-6 months and then he takes the other half year off.....
He was checking out Indonesia and Bali...those were his favorite spots!!
right now Angela and Emma are having Girl's night out watching Angelas and Demons....
Life is so short!!
So I'm gonna escape again to
BYRON BAY!!

I have been missing out on so much for so long...
I realized that the other night in Nimbin...

I saw a Dutch couple that were having a wonderful time together...
they were soulmates enjoying each other's company for seven years...
soulmates....

So many times I have fallen in love hoping that there was some magic
and it always dissipates ...
except for Alene...
who always loved me....and I still feel her protective energy....
but then my true soulmate passed away
while I just took her for granted...
she was so wonderful to me..

Norm Stamper
Retired Seattle police chief, member of Law Enforcement Against Prohibition
Posted March 28, 2009 05:57 PM (EST)

Comments (from Huffington Post)
The president's busy. He's got important things to do, like rescuing the economy, saving jobs and mortgages and industries. But we ought not to let him off the hook for his frivolous dismissal of a widely popular question he faced in Thursday's Online Town Hall.
At the top of the televised event, the president announced that of the 3.5 million votes on the thousands of questions received in advance, one topic "ranked fairly high." It was whether legalizing marijuana would improve the economy and encourage job creation. He responded: "The answer is no, I don't think that is a good strategy to grow our economy." He then asked rhetorically what the question says about "the online audience."
Get it? His in-the-flesh audience got it, chuckling politely at the allusion to a Stoner Nation plugged in to the "internets." The problem for Mr. Obama is that marijuana reform was at or near the top of the list of all questions in three major categories: budget, health care reform, green jobs and energy. Our leader doesn't seem to understand that millions of his interlocutor-constituents are actually quite serious about the issue.
Which is not to say that drugs, particularly pot, doesn't offer up a rich if predictable vein of humor. Cheech and Chong's vintage "Dave's not here!" routine is still a side-splitter. As Larry the Cable Guy would say, "I don't care who you are, that's funny right there."But there's nothing comical about tens of millions of Americans being busted, frightened out of their wits, losing their jobs, their student loans, their public housing, their families, their freedom...
And show me the humor in a dying cancer patient who's denied legal access to a drug known to relieve pain and suffering.
Having just returned from Minnesota whose state lawmakers are entertaining a conservative, highly restrictive medical marijuana law, I can tell you what's not funny to Joni Whiting.
Ms. Whiting told the House's Public Safety Policy and Oversight Committee of her 26-year-old daughter Stephanie's two-year battle with facial melanoma that surfaced during the young woman's third pregnancy. The packed hearing room was dead quiet as Ms. Whiting spoke of Stephanie's face being cut off "one inch at a time, until there was nothing left to cut." She spoke of her daughter's severe nausea, her "continuous and uncontrollable pain."Stephanie moved back to her family's home and "bravely began to make plans for the ending of her life." The tumors continued to grow, invading the inside and outside of her mouth, as well as her throat and chest. Nausea was a constant companion. Zofran and (significantly) Marinol, the synthetic pill version of THC, did nothing to abate the symptoms. Stephanie began wasting away. She lost all hope of relief.
Joni's other children approached their mother, begged her to let their sister use marijuana. But Ms. Whiting, a Vietnam veteran whose youngest son recently returned from 18 months in Iraq, was a law-abiding woman. And she was afraid of the authorities. There was no way she would allow the illicit substance in her house. As she held her ground, her grownup kids removed Stephanie from the family home. Three days later, wracked by guilt, Joni welcomed her daughter back. "I called a number of family members and friends...and asked if they knew of anywhere we could purchase marijuana. The next morning someone had placed a package of it on our doorstep. I have never known whom to thank for it but I remain grateful beyond belief." The marijuana restored Stephanie's appetite. It allowed her to eat three meals a day, and to keep the food down. She regained energy and, in the words of her mother, "looked better than I had seen her in months."
Stephanie survived another 89 days, celebrating both Thanksgiving and Christmas with her family.
Shortly after the holidays, Stephanie's pain became "so severe that when she asked my husband and me to lie down on both sides of her and hold her, she couldn't stand the pain of us touching her body."Stephanie died on January 14, 2003 in the room she grew up in, holding her mother's hand. A mother who, as she told the legislative committee, would "have no problem going to jail for acquiring medical marijuana for my suffering child."
Following Joni Whiting's presentation, it was all I could do to hold it together during my own testimony. Such was the power of this one woman's story. And of the sadness and rage roiling inside me as I reflected on the countless other Stephanies who are made to suffer not only the ravages of terminal illness and intractable pain but the callousness and narrow-mindedness of their leaders.
When I finished my testimony, a local police chief, a member of the committee, angrily accused me of disrespecting the police officers in the room--who'd shown up in force, in uniform, to oppose medical marijuana. Wearing a bright yellow tie with the lettering "Police Line, Do Not Cross," the chief charged me with placing more stock in the opinions of doctors than of Minnesota's cops. Guilty, as charged. Who are we, I asked him, to substitute our judgment for that of medical professionals and their patients? Who are we, for that matter, to deny the will of the people.
There's much value in humor, even during times of pain and tragedy. So long as the joke is not at the expense of the suffering.
It's been a bad couple of weeks for the president. His Leno comment about the Special Olympics while self-deprecating and not malicious was certainly tone deaf, followed soon after by his casting gratuitous aspersions at serious advocates of marijuana reform. But Barack Obama is a decent and honorable man, compassionate and wise. I can't believe he would do anything other than what Joni Whiting did if, God forbid, he faced similar choices within his own family. I can't believe he doesn't realize the political value of taking a more reasoned, courageous stand on drug policy reform in general. Or of at least providing honest, thoughtful answers on the issue.Perhaps we should show him what's in it for him? Perhaps we should make certain that in every future "town hall" the president is reassured of the seriousness of the legions of voters working to end cruel and ineffective drug laws.

Git-er-done!

"On the way through the desert between Herat and Kandahar in Afghanistan
Several young backpackers in the late sixties and the early seventies travelled the long way by land from Europe to Kathmandu through Turkey, Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan and India to Nepal. The majority spent a few months or half an year out there, and a few of them settled in Nepal or India for years, living on a low budget with hash and other drugs. It became a trend, unmistakable connected to the hippie generation, founding the backpacker's massive conquer of the world several years later. But why did they do it? There are several answers to that question. The romance of the road, the attraction of drugs, the need of breaking the daily, monotonous way of living, the search for direct experience, the desire to explore what's on the other side of the desert or the mountains, the curiosity to foreign, exotic cultures. And to quite a few, a search for their own identity. However, no matter which reasons took them on the trail, they have one thing in common: Few of them remained the same persons after their return, and it's no exaggeration to say, that the trip became decisive for their behaviour and points of view for the rest of their life. Several Danish backpackers from that period, who came home after a long stay in India or Nepal, were unable to do very much during the next half year after their arrival - apart from gazing at a wall, trying to digest their great experience! Frontiers of many kinds were crossed by the hippies and the backpackers of the past. In the late sixties and early seventies, travelling to the third world was much more complicated and unusual than today, and for the same reason, places like Kathmandu and most of the sites along The Hippie Trail were much more exotic than now. In the sixties and early seventies, individual travels to The Middle East and The Far East was an exotic experience, which had the capability to change you forever. Backpackers from the sixties and seventies didn't have today's security at all. E-mail, credit cards and mobile phones didn't exist, and a phone call to your home country was a rare emergency action. On the other hand, travellers still had the feeling of being true pioneers and explorers. Those who had never been outside Europe or the other western countries - which was by far the major part - got the cultural shock of their life. The first really exotic country on the route was Turkey, but the biggest challenge of them all was the confrontation with India. India still has a vast diversity of religions, culture, languages and nature to offer, but to many - especially if you are not used to travelling as an individual - the country can be a real challenge for you! The best things to bring with you are a relaxed mind, patience and a good sense of humour. However, if you don't like curiosity, crowds of people, bureaucracy and a certain amount of insanity, you shouldn't go there, not even today!"

I wondered what the fascination of hippies and old classic songs had for Khatmandu?? So I did a search and found this other site...

I was telling her how I might have 5 good years of being in really fantastic shape...

we have to learn how to enjoy everyday as if it is our last...

my honey was worried if there were any life insurance policies with double indemnity if I get eaten by a shark....it's cool swimming in the surf at dusk but then there's more risk of these large predators hanging around going for the bait fish...

I keep my eyes open so I can punch the nose of him if I see him first...

I can still see well underwater in the approaching darkness

then surf to the safety of shore to check out these palaces built sometimes on 3 or 4 block of the beach...one of these palaces looks like a doll house with all glass windows exposed to the publics' envious view from the beach...with some of these palaces they've gradually taken over the dune vegetation to make it as if the public beach has become the domain of this "castle"...

at night they have a huge lighthouse powerful beam on their beach

it's almost as if the beam tells everyone about their palace and the beach is theirs...

they've put a large trampoline for the children

of course, it's right in the middle of what is supposed to be dune vegetation

I guess, according to council, the wealthy owners can have landscapers extend their lawns into the public dune vegetation as they plant species indigenous to the area and which hold the sand better!

ok...what is happiness...I guess becoming Aussie will be my ultimate goal....
Imagine someone wanting to be American as much as I want to be Aussie...just look at that blue ocean beckoning for you put on your speedos and dive straight into the clean blue water...It feels like home...the place I frolicked in as a young child of the 60's..

I'm having my usual epiphenous herbs .... enjoying a few complimentary leaves from our gracious hosts from the gorgeous hinterland...
while I feel the finity of life more and more...I need to share as much as I can each day ...and also write a journal...
as we discover how to enjoy the next 2 decades of parenthood while still having lives for ourselves to enjoy..
little moments that we will cherish as we age together...
have some Cappucinos at the beach cafe near our favorite surf club...
watching each new moment of Colin Murray Garvald's life fold vicariously before us...

a picture is a thousand words x 10 with ADD x10 with certaiin herbs= 100 x the normal(??) bloke's perspective and perce ption...

Do you watch one movie and focus only on your movie of life or do you see several movies going on at once in your brain...

Living with another person with this disability(talent?) to encumber their brain only helps me realize my own condition combined with drastic mood swings.....How does one cope with this anchor on his/her brain and then feel overwhelmed with so many tasks that a multitasker could have finished long long long ago...

If I was more of a go getter, I would have moved heaven onto earth to live permanently in this gorgeous paradise of 36 straight kilometers of beautifully yellow sandy beaches!

both of us must like the color, blue...

It was so cool seeing my wife, the mother of our love child, happy again! My cousin, Sally, came to visit with her family..It was such a touch of warmth feeling the warmth of our extended family...we had been through so much...I was happy that Ang was discharged from the psych ward ...
This is a lesson to us and all readers out there to be careful what you say to shrinks when you're sleep deprived!!

Nimbin was fantastic! I met Benny Zabel, the famous resident artist of this town... He has painted the beautiful murals all over this little hippy haven in the hills of OZ!


http://www.nimbinaustralia.com/bennyzable/benny-zable-story.html






ng

Hey Dude, don't be afraid,

"Take a sad song and make it better"

Remember to let her into your heart"

Yesterday was Dad's bday in Oz or today in the USA...
Today was a great day after our friend, Stan, came over to visit our little family... There is nothing like a little natural therapeutic herbal medication to lift my spirits...
nothing could do better to cut through the tensions of parenthood than a little of Puff, the magic dragon!
Nothing else on the market helps one stand back and realize even with all the new found stresses and constraints of rearing a child ,,, we are all still on holiday...

It was wonderful seeing Gabrielle at the Surf Club this Avo for a couple drinks
she gave us some wonderful therapeutic advice and reassurance....this last week was the most bipolar of all with the ups and downs of my sweetheart...
my muse only asked for a divorce about once every day except for Monday and Tuesday...Those were great days with a little family visit down our pathway through the dunes to the beach...
oftentime as our relationship evolves, it's 2 steps forward and 1 or 2 steps back...
we are learning how to cope with each other's multidimensional personalitiess
and the herb helps me be more creative in appealing to wife's sense of humor
this way I could communicate with her laughing in the whole entertaining process
Nothing like impulsively doing a Chippendale dance for her in her sexy string thong!

With the Mermaid Beach diet of swimming 2x a day and bicycling everywhere as the soul mode of "fast" transportation,

I'm losing about a kilo per week....as my wife eats less, so do I!...
now, I have the luxury of the Pacific as my daily backyard playground!!
I've lost over 10 kilos!
Tomorrow, I will be at the local Surf Club's handicap race where we swim past the breakers around a couple of buoys,,,,
I'll probably get about a 2 minute handicap whereas the best swimmers that are experienced racers might start after about 10 minutes....
While we were at the surf club

wow!!...I hope that Conyers nails this pompous pig and the rest of the Bush henchmen ...

will they get him as well as they did to all those crooks from Watergate??
Watching this pig grovel the way the bloke did in Deliverance wouldn't do justice for all the murders and bullshit that this criminal brain of Bush has masterminded!
No punishment would be better for this slimy bastard!
Saddam was executed....why not the same for causing a war of murders for innocent young soldiers and civilians!

"The stories of creative individuals are replete with instances of childhood problems in school (Piirto, 1992; Thompson, 1971; West, 1991). Although it has been argued that many creative individuals have suffered from mood disorders and other clinically significant psychological problems (Hershman & Lieb, 1988; Jamison, 1993), there are others whose behavior, although irregular, may be more indicative of their creativity than of any disorders. In the case of Janet Frame, New Zealand's poet and novelist, her "difference" resulted in a diagnosis of schizophrenia, confinement to a mental institution, and the scheduling of a lobotomy that was only canceled when her first novel gained widespread distinction (Frame, 1984, pp. 110-111). In some cases the very qualities that cause creative individuals to have problems are the same ones that may facilitate in their creative accomplishments. Edison's energy, the vivid imagery in the daydreams of Frost and Wright, and Einstein's alternative mode of thinking created problems for them in school, but were undoubtedly invaluable in their creative endeavors."

what can we say??/

uh, huh...yep...

Prettiest baby on the C

Next we can sit ourselves down in meditation, with a journal, or with a trusted friend to explore the matter more thoroughly.

Just shining the light of our awareness on the source of our resistance is sometimes enough to dispel its power.

At other times, further effort is required. Either way, we need not fear these parts that do not want to heal.

We only need to take them under our wing and bring them with us into the light. "

Ang just went shopping with the bub...

I'm happy she still has some of her tax refund check

TV is showing the "remake of Barrack" Monday night at 9:50 (here is my other gf;)

just kidding...

she won't tell me how much she spent on her hair...but's that's cool...I'm so happy she still hasn't spent all of her hard earned tax refund$$

and can have a good hair day!!
I haven't had to worry about hair or lack of it on my head for over 3 decades!! I guess that's like having a bad hair day for more than half my life???
It seems like baldness is the one disability that anybody can pick on....

"Look, Ma. He has zero hair!"

lol

but seriously folks , we all have to tighten our belts with us in the worst depression since Okies left the Okie Zone in the "Grapes of Wrath" 30's!

as beach bums we are making the least carbon imprint
for any small family in the western world(??)....cept my wife takes showers too long..;)

I'm watching features of the "Love Guru" while I write to you in my state of funky lethargy....
feeling better with the Byron Bay hinterlands' freshly ground coffee beans mixed in with my love herbs....
all mixed with Puff the Magic hydro and I am feeling a little better ....and more playful...
heck!!...we are with other who also love this wonderful backyard of ours' called the Pacific!!
cept I get to play on it every day....as the days waste by in this lazy summer in the bottom hemisphere...

It is a very sinful type of laziness and I feel guilty as hell...so I go for a swim or take a nap

watching the features of this DVD

Mike Meyers is a more waspish version of Woody Allen...

I suppose he is very creative and could have some of the qualities of some bloke with ADD

Other than that I could ramble on about something but I have no clue what my random readers of this site wanna read?? Leigh Ann and others please feel free to comment again...

Raphael, leave another comment...

Matt Wheatley, thanks for the xmas card from Tahoe...

Looks like you and the family are very healthy ....maybe this summer we could have a reunion??

It is cool to look forward to just summers!!

Well, Ang hasn't come back from her"hour " walk...and Id like to swim before the sharks come out....

Need to buy a Bulletin to buy a paper and some local honey!

I guess I am just a hopeless romantic...Maybe I am very in touch with my feminine side??

I often think of my wife coming into this country with our little Colin inside of her kicking