Marc Emery- Important for Pot heads!!

If you live in Canada, you may have heard of Marc Emery, the Prince of Pot.  If you live in the United States you may have heard of him too, although when I am in the US I never see any news coverage about him, 60 minutes did a show but that’s about it.

Anyway, Marc Emery is a Canadian Marijuana activist.  He opened Hemp BC in Vancouver, and also started Pot TV.  He is very passionate about legalizing marijuana and what’s not to love about that?  Read more about him here.

Anyway, along with his other accomplishments, Emery also sold marijuana seeds online.  In 2005, the United States DEA went into Canada and closed down Emery’s shop and seed business.  The United States went into Canada and enforced US LAW in CANADA???!!  YES!  Because, seeds were sold to customers in the United States.

Since then, Emery has been facing a possible life term in prison(under US law)- and today accepted a plea deal that would result in him spending 5-10 years in prison.  He did this to (obviously keep him out of a life term) AND to keep his two colleagues from having to serve sentences as well- one of his fellow activists who faced jail time has Crohn’s disease, and uses the drug to alleviate symptoms.  Just like millions of chronically ill people could benefit from.  I think if your condition is chronic, you should get a little chronic.

But what is wrong with this picture?  If you are a fellow pot head, you have probably come across a seed or two in your day.  Now, what would a weed lover do with a wayward seed?  Plant it!  And then you get a little sprout and your practically selling your crop already, and then you wake up 3 days later and your precious little sprout is flopped over dead.  It’s f-ing hard to grow pot!  You need a specific set-up and even the most basic equipment can be expensive.  So my guess is that over half of the US customers were probably stoners like me who think pot is as easy to grow as a Chia Pet, and produced no crop from these illegal seeds.  But does the United States care?  No, because the government refuses to recognize that pot is not on the same level as heroin and as usual, we make it our job to stick our nose in the business of other countries.  So I guess we’d rather import weed instead of have it grown at home.

I am outraged that Marc Emery has to serve jail time at all, what a criminal!  Rapists serve less time than him!  And I’m outraged that we are living in this nightmare world where alcohol and cigarettes are legal and BOTH can kill you, but a PLANT that is never fatal, is not addictive, and has no negative health effects is treated like a WMD. 

No wonder kids are dying from things like huffing and the choking game, Jesus if they had a couple joints on hand like normal teenagers are supposed to we wouldn’t have all these freaky accidents!  MySpace wouldn’t run their young lives and video games wouldn’t be turning young men into owl-eyed, nocturnal, I-can’t-change-a-flat-but-I-can-work-a-machine-gun-in-halo, and girls into catty text-messaging Paris Hilton carbon copies (Paris smokes pot though, but I couldn’t think of anything else).  And adults could fucking relax once in a while instead of filling their time with work/tv/work/tv.  People could have a reason to get together and visit, instead of living isolated lives and only getting together for holidays. 

“Hey Neighbor, want to pop into my garage and want to help me smoke this joint?”

“Sure, I just got home from work and would love to experience human interaction instead of watching television until bed.  Crimeny, I just spend 8 hours staring at a computer and truthfully, I’m lonely.  My kids spent all night in their rooms watching tv, text-messaging, going on MySpace and huffing spraypaint.  And my wife just watches reality tv while drinking wine from a box.  When she isn’t doing that she’s busy buying the latest sheet set from the Martha Stewart collection.  I really don’t see my family at all, and we don’t laugh together anymore.”

“Well” says the joint-providing neighbor as they proceed into his garage, “my family used to have the same problem, and while my wife still has the occassional box of wine and my kids still have cybersex on MySpace with men my age, I have found solace in this special time I like to call After-Work-Daddy’s-In-The-Garage-Hour.  My family knows they can come into join me, and sometimes my wife does and we laugh and talk about funny things and split a bag of Doritos, it’s really helped our relationship”

“Wow, that sounds wonderful, perhaps I’ll occassionally do the same, it’s not that expensive and it’s not bad for you, and if it encourages interaction with me and my family then why wouldn’t I try it?” 

“You know, Neighbor, we live in a lonely world, and sometimes I think this little plant” (motioning to a small terrarium with 1 pot plant thriving) “is the only thing that truly helps me relax while living in this problem ridden society”

BOOM BOOM BOOM- garage door blows off it’s tracks- men wearing gas masks and weilding maching guns and shields burst in and immediately taser Neighbor and Neighbor with Joint.  Both men are currently serving 9 years in jail.

The End

JUST LEGALIZE IT ALREADY YOU FOOLS!  CANADA IS GETTING CLOSE, THE UNITED STATES NEEDS TO WAKE UP AND GET ITS PRIORITIES IN ORDER.

I guess I’ll go drink a liter of vodka and smoke a carton of cigarettes now, totally legal, totally acceptable.  Fucking backwards.

Immigration Update

Alright, here is the background information:

• I’m a US citizen
• My husband is Canadian
• I want to live in Canada with him
• Immigrating sucks

So after trying every way possible to stay together during my immigration process- I have come to realize that there is no easy way to do so.  Last winter I “moved” here and thought applying for Permanent Residency would be easy/ no big deal.  Wrong.  Came back home with my parents in Illinois. 

I have been researching how to do this crap for a year now, and after coming to Saskatchewan and trying to get a job then apply for PR from within Canada and that FAILING after 12 weeks of waiting, I have accepted the fact that I must return home once again and file from outside of Canada.

I have to fill out a stack of paperwork (which I am 90% done with- yay), provide pictures and any other type of documentation that proves I did not marry my husband for his wealth (ha!) or for a better life in Canada (HAHA!), get an immigrant medical examination in Chicago (checking to see I have all my teeth, am not HIV +, crazy, a TB carrier, an alien, or infected in any other way), pay $1000, and then I’m done!  How easy?!  Then I get to wait 3-11 months for the verdict. 

I feel stupid for not doing this sooner, but honestly- it’s hard and time consuming!  Plus until recently I was thinking it took 2 years to process  and didn’t know where I should be before committing to that, AND if you fill out the forms wrong or forget something you can totally screw yourself over.  AND I didn’t know I had to get a medical examination, didn’t have the money, and we weren’t married until last June and if we were to apply as common law partners before then we really didn’t have enough documentation to prove it (shared bills, bank accounts- you can’t get that stuff in a country where you aren’t a citizen!). 

It has just been so incredibly difficult to get accurate help and get straight answers… so if ANYONE or anyone you know is trying to live or work in Canada feel free to contact me because I will help you!  I feel sorry for anyone else in a similar situation… especially when these Canadians keep shipping their cute hockey players to US schools!  But anyway, if you too are immigrating and have questions or are seeking tips- I would be happy to help.

Devastation

Merry Fucking Christmas!

After 12 weeks of waiting for the Canadian government to review my application for a shit $9 an hour cashier job… the answer is no.  Refused!  The pharmacy that wanted to hire me does not have permission to do so.  And I had to call the offices to find that out!  They didn’t even bother to let me or the pharmacy know!!!  What the fuck?  What is wrong with these people? 

So now I guess the next step is to apply for Permanent Residence, which takes 2 years, and I don’t know how the fuck I’m supposed to support myself when I can’t work and my husband is in school.  I’m guessing he will have to drop out and get a job, but one income still doesn’t cover our meager monthly expenses and my stupid student loans.  And if he quits school then we have to start back up with his student loans too! 

This is so ridiculous I can’t even see straight.  I have now officially wasted a year of my life trying to get a job in Canada- it would be easier for me to be on welfare there than to work and support myself!  And now here I am again, stuck with no plan, no money, and no job.  Fuck. You. Canada.  Thanks for absolutely nothing.

The Girlfriends

Well I wrote a whole thing about why I haven’t been writing lately, and about my latest adventure last weekend, etc.  And my lovely computer let me finish and then crashed.  I could go back and just post what I wrote because it got saved as a draft- but I’m going to take a hint from my computer and just re-write the whole thing.  The first one must have been pretty bad because my computer never crashes!

So anyway…

I haven’t been writing because I’ve been busy doing other things- outside- and high.  So I haven’t written.  But it was really nice to read all the nice comments about my ‘Bees to the Face’ post.

So enough updates… and now for my latest Canadian Adventure: Hockey Season begins, and I’m one of the players’ womenfolk.

You see, in hockey, the men play the game and all the girlfriends and wives go to the games and watch- together.  We had ‘The Girlfriends’ in the States when my husband played there, but they were a little different.  I didn’t sit with them when I went to the game because, well I had better things to do.  This hockey season in Canada, however, things are different- and I really don’t have anything better to do!  But I was pleasantly surprised by this native group of girlfriends, and then drunk, and then sick. 

6:30 pm Friday- We get a ride outside of the city to the rural town where this night’s game is taking place.  And when I say rural town, I really mean it.  The player giving us a ride was instructed by his girlfriend to drop me off at a house they were at on the way to the game.  I am deposited and the men leave.

7:30 pm- It is me, The Girlfriends, and a couple of boys who don’t play on the hockey team.  We drink and watch Canadian football. 

***  Now- I am NOT a drinker, I may get high like Snoop Dogg but I rarely drink.  When I drank in college I turned into a slut, when I drank after college I got sick… so I really don’t enjoy it, but sometimes….

8ish- whatever, it doesn’t matter what time it is- we leave for the game, late, and with 5 of us crammed in a small vehicle we drive along the deserted, snow covered roads towards the hockey rink, passing wine coolers around as we go.  I don’t condone drinking and driving, but I wasn’t driving!  Ha!  No, seriously, no one was on the road so if we crashed we would have only hurt ourselves- we would possibly be found three weeks later frozen to death under a make-shift pile of lycra, fleece, and hair.

Anyway, we get there safely and bypass the hockey rink for the curling rink (where the beer garden is) and YES- this tiny town has both a hockey rink AND a curling rink, how delightfully Canadian

So we go to the beer garden and drink some more, occassionally going into the hockey rink to check the score- mainly focusing on strutting around like hot shit groupies (at least that’s what I was doing- because I was DRUNK).

The game ends, the men sniff us out and join us in the curling rink.  We all drink and eat stale chips together, my husband looks at me and knows I’m drunk, and promptly switches tables- he’s been down this road before.

Then, the queen of The Girlfriends (there is always a Queen, she is either a) the prettiest, b) is dating the best player on the team, c) is most popular/ always knows what’s going on.)  So the Queen invites me out to some strangers car to smoke weed.  For some reason she pegged me for a stoner- go figure.  So we go out to this random car, I roll a joint, and we smoke the car owner’s weed. 

About 15 minutes later we emerge from the car, and I am realizing that I am wasted off my ass.  We go back inside and after swallowing my own puke a few times I figure I should head to the bathroom… I stay there because I am too dizzy to make an entrance back into the beer room and am too embarrassed to crawl.  Eventually one of the girls comes in and asks if I’m okay- I say I’m fine, just drunk and sick… then finally my husband came to my rescue and we got a ride home from the Queen and her boyfriend.

Needless to say, I was humiliated… yet I feel like I have passed any kind of weird initiation into Canadian culture.  Being one of The Girlfriends at a hockey game is probably going to be a big part of my winters, and if I had to drink myself stupid and then puke in some random bathroom then fine!  I’ll be ready for the next game.  And looking back on some of my past drunken endeavors, this was really not bad at all.  At least I had the sense to stay in the bathroom, not come on to someone’s boyfriend, dance, tell jokes, or try to drive.