Drugs/the
northern lights are on and burning brightly…
There
is something going amazingly wrong on the streets of Johannesburg
and probably South Africa. Not that this is something to fret about;
we all know that the streets of South Africa generally tend to lead
the pack when it comes to things going amazingly wrong. It reminds
me of The Stumble Inn in Stellenbosch, a backpacker's pit on Mark
Street. Chances are that you've never been there, but if you have,
you were probably not planning to stay but rather observe some of
the fine looking Scandinavian women who, after shafting everything
they could in Kenya, Malawi, Mozambique, Zimbabwe and the Limpopo
Province, decided to wind down amongst vineyards and mountains and
rivers and people from Natal or The Eastern Cape who could be given
money and told to piss off or get drunk (which is why you, and not
them, usually came right).
Amidst
the attempted seductions, there was a character, a Dutch drifter
whose view on life was not worth hearing (not that it stopped him
from telling you anyway) and whose experiences sounded like they
came straight out of a fourteen year old gymnast's wet dream. One
night, this mystic told me that all drugs were fine (once before,
he also told me that he had played trumpet next to Ruben Gonzalez
playing piano in Cuba. When I asked him what the capital of Cuba
was, he stroked his head and said 'Argentina'). He said that drugs
were completely acceptable in this day and age, as freedom of expression
was a subconscious revolution fought against governments who tried
to condition thoughts. What a winkie, what a complete ass (the only
reason I remember it word for word because apart from my neighbor's
opinions on motor racing, I've never heard anything like it…) .
Apparently, according to David Icke, it's a reverse of that statement.
Before I left the Stumble Inn that night, he gave me a toke on what
was, I thought, perfectly acceptable Swaziland weed. 'One day all
dope will be like this,' I heard, whilst slipping away into a condition
I could describe as 'Never, never, never, never.'
Thank
God that horrible shit is confined to the trailer bedroom of this
bell-end. Or so I thought.
Weed
is no longer the simple cure to boredom or loneliness. It is no
longer that little stash you hollow out a bible to home and place
it on your fireplace for those afternoon sessions following Sunday
roasts when you and ten others have cleaned 12 bottles of Klein
Constantia Marlbrooke. It is no longer something to place in the
food of a boring guest. South African reefer has taken on a whole
new persona. These really is Nightmare on Main Street and believe
me, you'll never be able to remember what you did last summer.
Some
chemical dicks are mixing the strains of two forms of weed together
(not that it takes such intelligence but like the song says, whatever).
You've got the Pacific strain (Cannabis Sativa) that is grown on
the border of California and Mexico and the African strain (Cannabis
Indica) that is grown in the fields of the Transkei, Kenya and Mozambique.
Once you put the two together, you've already got the formula for
a disaster. One makes you jump, the other makes you want to watch
The Matrix or play Super Mario Brothers forever. Two computer obsessed
designers who work below my office are morally culpable as cultivators
here - Weapons of Mass Distraction. Bear in mind that the merging
of these two seeds is a specialist process - conducted in a greenhouse
or a lab (takes the memories of boats stranded without bait in the
Langebaan lagoon to the cleaners and then only p***** on them).
Once the first step of the marriage is complete, the plant is treated
to artificial light and an electronic watering system. Once the
plant reaches a decent age (two months), a fertilizer solution is
used to speed growth and strengthen the effect. The fertilizer,
in this case, is a mixture of LSD (are you trying to wreck my life
or what?), along with all the other tourists, like Regro and Liverine
(exactly why your usual fertilizer bags mark very clearly with a
little Massive Attack - KEEP AWAY FROM CHILDREN). Come two months
and you're away. Put this in front of anyone demotivated individual
with a trust fund and an addictive personality and he or she are
gone or sold. These two Neo obsessed computer blotter - jotters
are making a killing from selling genetically modified marijuana
completely against the grain of what Hemp farmers are trying to
communicate.
If
you were a misfit philosopher, you could compare the state of reefer
to the state of the Polo Lounge at The Westcliff; once, and not
so long ago, my friend Frank and I could mosey along on a Saturday
evening, be driven in the golf cart on a Saturday evening to the
top level and met by some of the finest young women you have ever
seen. Foreigners with rich husbands or partners or just single perfect
women but still incredible to look at. These days, all you have
are these Northern Suburb 40+ tarts with tank tops and belly rings.
They look like cars from Indian drag races. Where as it once had
a natural feel with beauties on Saturday nights, the place has been
bo-toxed in the nought and replaced by people straight out of Checkers
or The Cock 'n Bull in Fourways Mall.
Cannabis
now features in the Government Health Gazette as a primary cause
of Mental Illness. There are consistent and accurate links between
excessive use or reliance and schizophrenia, as well as the given
all parents warn their children of - that, amongst other things,
it is not conducive to goal attainment.
The
fascination with cannabis is one of this country's biggest conversation
starters. Apart from Amsterdam or San Francisco, you probably won't
here the substance spoken of more. Last week, I attended a house
party where I found a young girl, drunk and stoned, riding solo
on a sofa in an abandoned study but for a tiny pair of briefs and
a tight top. All very nice and well if your first name starts with
an S and your surname with a V, but she couldn't have been older
than 17. 'Max gave me some of this stuff,' she gargled through eyes
that looked like a Soweto road map, 'I can't feel my arms.' Max,
(the young girl's brother), later tried to convince me to toke on
the perp but I found myself in time and mercifully saved my evening.
It's the youth that are the guinea pigs for the elder's experiments;
I found a bunch of youths, all dressed in rebel skater gear sitting
outside in the freezing cold in silence but for a very odd looks
and the shivering of brace clad teeth that sounded like a hail storm
on an iron shack. Someone shouted, 'Children just don't climb trees
anymore!' much to their already paranoid states. Bugger that for
a game of soldiers or a pocket of power rangers - imagine telling
your class what you did last weekend with that shit rolling around
your system?
These computer blotter - jotters below me are now in a position
to face complete disclosure. Come Saturday morning and these two
are not working, but studying the effects of what soaking the already
horrific substance (after it's been in the 'lab', after it's had
a nice dose of fertilizer…) in petrol, all the while knowing that
they could collapse and end up in casualty. As they did not, they
know intend to complete the process by mellowing the weed in unleaded
for a few hours before they get busy in their sales. Their names?
Ask me and I'll tell you.
There
are now all these fancy names - White Widow, California Orange,
Northern Lights etc. But effectively, they all fall under the category
of SKUNK, the official title given to any cannabis genetically tampered
and modified. Why SKUNK? Well, for none other reason than that it
bloody well stinks. Now, put that in your pipe and smoke it…
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