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Thursday, January 02, 2003
My local paper The Georgetown Indepedent has a new website, which is cool because I was planning on taking some time to discuss the small "War On Drugs" they seem to have been waging since at least last winter, and now I can actually link to some of the articles in question instead of having to copy them all down. I like the way the paper chooses to introduce the website:
"We are pleased to offer this other option to our to help keep them informed about the events and news in Halton Hillls," Said publisher Ken Nugent.
The closing of the article is what I really love:
"It also allows our advertisers to get their message across to more people"
Ah, yesss, everything becomes so clear all of a sudden.
Over the last year and a half since we've moved back to Georgetown, the Independent has devoted several articles to the growing (ha!) problem of Grow Houses sprouting (Ha! Ha!) up all over Halton, and have been entreating citizens to keep on the lookout for suspicious looking properties under the warning that that this is a concern for Police because the people that own or rent these properties are stealing hydro and the homes themselves are also fire hazards. Oh, of course, they are also drug dealers, or at least know people who are. The 'fire hazard' thing is a fair enough justification, although it naturally ignores any discussion over whether this would be necessary at all if people were allowed to grow and sell it legally. This shouldn't suprise me I guess.
What has kind of suprised me are the continuing appeals to citizens to help alert the police to cannabis being secretly grown in local cornfields, and one article printed last winter that even went so far as to suggest 'helpful tips' to aid local parents in recognizing dope usage in their teenagers. Like a script stolen from a 1950's educational film, the list of identifying symptons included: an abnormal decline in school grades, surly behaviour, and dark rings under their eyes! Nevermind that this description could probably apply to all teenagers between the ages of 13-18 at some time or another! And consider that Halton Police were recently lamenting how they need 60 more police officers in a article a couple of weeks ago, you would expect that they might have better things to do with their time. I mean, according to the Police Blotter printed in Wednesday edition they only caught one drunk driver over Christmas. Strange, considering how many cars I saw parked outside of local pubs.
This is the most recent article "Police chief concerned pot law proposals are confusing youths." Even the people who come out in favour of the new federal bill to decriminalize possession and growing of small amounts of marijuana such as Halton MP Julian Reed, are quick to pipe up (or the editor of the paper is quick to draw attention to) that they definately not "Condone its use" However much "sense" they feel the new proposed law makes. My favourite line comes from Maggie Waligora, a registered nurse, and chief operating officer of the Halton Hills-based Art of Healthy Living Inc (I don't know what this is, and couldn't find any listings for it anwhere as a local service. But, hey, I'm sure it exists somewhere) offers up the perenial knee-jerk prohibitionist defence that:
"Marijuana is the gateway drug to other drugs."
Maggie, whose group which offers a support for parents of teens with drug and crime problems evidentally didn't get a chance to read the federally commissioned and highly publicized released Senate Special Commitee on Illegal Drugs Reportwhich was made public in the summer of 2002 and in which it was made pretty clear that the whole "gateway drug" concept is unsupportable.
"The Gateway Theory suggests that users trajectories offer them choices as they start their trajectory of use and that one of these choices is to use other drugs. According to this theory, certain factors, such as early initiation and more regular and heavier use, reinforce this possibility. However, these factors themselves, and early initiation to cannabis in particular, are related to earlier factors, arising from the family environment and social living conditions, that predispose the more vulnerable young people to this early initiation and more rapid progress towards regular and heavy use. "
"The link between cannabis and other drug use, according to this explanation, is thus a reflection that there are a number of risk factors and life pathways that predispose young people to use cannabis and that they overlap with the life pathways that predispose young people to use other illicit drugs."
"In addition to these factors that predispose some young people to heavier use of psychoactive substances including alcohol and tobacco first of all the sociological conditions under which users can obtain cannabis are such that they are in contact with an environment that is at least marginal if not criminal. Dealers are often the same people who also sell heroin, crack, amphetamines, cocaine and ecstasy such that the probability that a young cannabis user, already more vulnerable due to the factors of his personal trajectory, would come into contact with these other substances more easily. We would also add that wholesalers and dealers “cut or even mix their products; we were told at times that ecstasy, for example, could contain many things other than MDNA."
And here's the kicker:
"Furthermore, if it is true that use of substances such as heroin and cocaine develops almost necessarily out of prior use of marijuana, then it also develops out of the use of other substances, nicotine and alcohol in particular, which are more gateways to a trajectory of use than cannabis." (italics mine)"If we come back to trends in drug use in the population, while more than 30% have used cannabis, less than 4% have used cocaine and less than 1% heroin."
and I love this little section about the relationship between canabis and crime:
"Furthermore, simply because of its relaxing and euphoristic psychoactive effects and its effect of relaxing muscle tone, cannabis is hardly likely to lead to acts of violence."
"Data from studies on long-term users confirm this global picture of the relationship between cannabis and crime. Thus, Cohen and Kaal noted that less than 5% of their respondents had committed offences to obtain cannabis (pilfering, shoplifting, theft). The offence committed most frequently in order to obtain cannabis was selling it." (Italics mine again)
This is a drawing I did of Carl Sagan because he is one of my heros and it was only in his posthumous biography that he able to admit that he came up with some of his ideas while under the influence of cannabis. You know what, I'm not even going to ink it... cuz I'm just crazy like that....
It's New Years day and I am happily not at work. My day job is begining to drag on me lately, so I guess that means that my flute playing is sounding a little out of tune. I spent the evening in with Marianne. We ordered pizza and 'borrowed' a bottle of wine from my parents, and watched the last part of the ridiculous long documentary section on the Fellowship of the Ring DVD (which I thoroughly enjoyed, by the way.) We were asleep before midnight. I know, we're total party animals.
It is with some irony, considering my last post about "rich bastards at Christmas", that I really want to write about all the amazing presents I got this year for Christmas. Marianne got me this DVD
which I totally love and stars Doris Day, Rock Hudson and Tony Randall and is a lark of a movie about two rich swinging(okay, Day isn't so swinging) sophisticates in New York City who share a party line, and through a ridiculous but hilarious set of events start having a love affair. The most astounding thing about this film, and what made me so desire the widescreen DVD version, is the inovative use of split-screen, the effect of which is completly mangled by pan and scan. There is one great scene with Day in a bubble bath in her apartment talking to Hudson in a bubble bath and the 'wall' that they share is the split screen, if you get what I'm talking about. Day has her foot on the wall and in a flirtateous moment of dialogue Hudson starts to caress the bottom of her foot with his toe. She promptly whips it away, because, you know, she's not that type of girl, but you can tell she enjoyed it. I mean, it's Rock Hudson, right? How could she not enjoy it? This scene was almost imcomprehensible in its tv version.
There are also a couple of scenes where the screen is divided into three-triangles, in which one Rock is seducing one of his thousands of amours in the facing triangle and day is listening in the top triangle. Very funny.
An interesting side note that I found out from the IMDB is that the director Micheal Gordon directed Film Noir and suspense films through the 40's but was blacklisted for communist associations during the 50's and he took off to Australia until around the time this movie was made in '59. From that point on he made only light big-budget musicals and comedies. This movie is very light, with nary a hint of criticism of the culture it shows off so well, which is why it is such a good comparison point for the other DVD Marianne gave me which was.
The Apartment by Billy Wilder. This is a romantic-satire starring Jack Lemmon and Shirley Mclaine and was also made in '59 in black and white. I love those 50's movie that show office life in this overblown and inhuman kind of way, just rows and row of desks under flourescent lamps. There's a Danny Kaye movie from around this time that has this similar type of feel to this although the name escapes me now (I remember it from when I was 9 or 10), I imagine my that my Granny would've worked in a place like this. Anyway,Wilder had a much more cynical approach to the romantic comedy genre, and both Lemmon and Mclaine are basically just schmucks getting used by other people throughout the film. I have to think about this more... there's something about the romantic comedy plot structure that I just find so satisfying when it's well done. I have to admit that I even enjoyed "The Wedding Planner" with J-Lo and "Kate and Leopold" and "Bringing Up Baby" is one of my all time favourite movies. I never really realized this before. I will try to get to the bottom of it but if anyone has any ideas, let me know...
I also got this really cool Popeye toy from my brother. He's got this mop! an' a pail! and a big giant fist! an' his hat comes off! an' his pipe comes out! an' an'.... Anyway, anyone who knows me knows how much I like Popeye. I also got lots of nice dressy clothes that I can wear to work so that I can fool people into thinking that I know what I'm doing. 2002 was a very good year for presents for me, we received so many amazing gifts from our friends and family at the wedding and before at Marianne's shower. Of course my best present of the year was my wife, Marianne. (okay, everybody say "awww" in unison)
Pixelation Problem.
Interesting discussion going on at TCJ about Chipp Kidd's Schulz book. Yakov is mantaining that you can see the pixels on most of the strips in the book. I enjoyed the Schulz book, and never noticed this before, but it's true, with very little effort you can make out the blocky forms of the pixels in the black and white linework, and this is not subtle squinch-up-your-eyes kind of thing, it really looks crappy now that my attention has been drawn to it. I also think it's interesting that Kidd mentions at the back of the edition that everything was shot on a 4 by 5 camera. But what difference does it make how the images are captured if they're scanned in, or output, at too low of a resolution? But who knows what the whole story is with this. I can say from experience that scanning any black and white artwork for print work at any res under 800dpi is a big mistake. The higher res makes layout and scanning a huge pain in the ass, but there's no way around it if you want to get decent results. Even at 800 dpi you'll see pixelization if you look close enuf. I know that 99.9% of the population doesn't give a shit about stuff like this...
Or whatever...
The other day Marianne said to me: "What is this Blogger stuff all about anyway?"
"Oh" I said;" It's just kind of like an online journal or whatever where I can write stuff I'm thinking about or whatever"
" Is it just for yourself or is it for other people to read?" she asked.
"I dunno, maybe I'll Iet people read it or maybe I just do it for me or maybe I won't even end up doing it at all..." I responded non-commitally.
"Oh. So basically it's just somewhere where you can complain about the world. right?"
Succinct and to the heart of the matter as always...
I Did This
just before Christmas for the Christmas editon of Eye Weekly. You can email me and tell me that they don't look like any of the people they're supposed to be, that's okay, I don't mind. It's hard to do likeness(essess?) like this from photos for me. I'm no Hirschfeld. I'm pretty happy with it over all, although the subtler sections fo crayon d'arche shading I did on Daniel Day Lewis completely disapeared on the printed version.
posted by Alan
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