July 2011
“She was a fucking genius. …Whether this tragedy was preventable or not is now irrelevant. It is not preventable today. We have lost a beautiful and talented woman to this disease. …All we can do is adapt the way we view [addiction], not as a crime or a romantic affectation but as a disease that will kill.”
—
RUSSELL BRAND, himself eight years sober, remarking on the death of his friend, Amy Winehouse.
I don’t know a whole lot about Russell Brand except that he has terrible hair and isn’t really funny and is married to Katy Perry, but this article is gorgeous and exactly right on in terms of addiction. A recommended read. Even if you don’t care about Amy Winehouse.
Marijuana Legalization in Congress! →
cannabisculture.com
cwnl:
The first Congressional marijuana legalization bill is now in Congress — please support it!
H.R. 2306, the Ending Federal Marijuana Prohibition Act, would remove marijuana from the federal Controlled Substances Act and limit the federal government’s role in marijuana enforcement to cross-border or interstate smuggling. States would be able to legalize and regulate marijuana, or to continue to prohibit it, as they individually choose.
Please use our web form to contact your US Representative and your two US Senators in support of this historic bill. Please follow-up by calling their offices too — if you don’t know their numbers (or aren’t sure who they are), you can reach them by calling the Congressional Switchboard at (202) 224-3121. And please use our tell-a-friend form to spread the word.
Visit stopthedrugwar.org for more information on this bill, and sign up for our email list or paste stopthedrugwar.org/taxonomy/term/229 into your RSS reader to follow the news about marijuana policy.
Thank you for taking action!
Via CannabisCulture
Please, if you support the usage of Cannabis in our society or are at least okay with it reblog and/ or participate in getting the word out on this bill.
“When we were finishing season four, I had a really kind of profound, somber moment, by myself, standing on one of our stages, I was looking around at all of the random kind of grip and electric equipment and some of our set dressing, and the old Wienerlicious hot dog that was up on the wall. It was our very last night of shooting, I think I’d just wrapped, and I was walking back out to the stage, and I just kind of stopped in this middle area and I was looking around, and I just started crying. It was a really — I didn’t know if it was the last time I’d see all that stuff, I didn’t know if it was the last time I’d see some of my crew or cast members, and that’s honestly one of the worst feelings you can have as an actor, or anyone, you know, if all of a sudden this family that you have been a part of for so long — You have no clear direction on what the future together will look like. You don’t know if you’re saying goodbye, you don’t know if you’re saying “see you soon”, “see you later”. And that really just nailed me, really hard.”
—
Zachary Levi (via neuralmente)
man, i just love him so much.
Pretty sure you've always wanted to see me naked.. Well.. I'm feeling pretty adventurous today so go to datelink2(dot)com (switch [dot] with .) then sign up and find my profile under the username 'lolsummer69'. I hid my face in the pictures. but I want you to guess who I am and then hit me up on Facebook lol. Good luck.
lol uh.
appropriate gif goes here
let's grant the fetus the rights of a person
i-sauntered-vaguely-downwards:
just for a moment. Just go with me here.
Say, just for the sake of argument, that a fetus (prior to… 24 weeks which is when the vast majority of abortions take place, prior to 24 weeks) is a person. Legally. let’s say it has all the rights of a person. Presumably a pre-adult person so it can’t vote or hold office or anything like that, but you know it has the same rights as a under one year old baby say.
Now we know how pregnancy works, right? We know that up until a certain point (and certianly before 24 weeks) the fetus can not live outside the mother’s womb right? It just can’t happen. It’s growing, it’s developing. Actually before 24 weeks it can’t actually feel pain. It’s not wired up yet. Can’t happen. But still, let’s give it the rights of a already born child, just for this thought experiment.
Now we also know that no other legal person, with rights, actually has the right to use another person’s body against their will right? Not even to live. Not even if they are going to die a horrible, tragic, painful death if they don’t use another person’s body (even if it doesn’t kill their ‘host’). Most folks can live with one kidney but if I was dying, literally dying, I don’t have the right to force another human being into donating a kidney. Say I was going to die without a blood transplant, or a bone marrow transplant. I can’t pick a random person off the street (or even a relative for that matter) with the same blood type as me and FORCE! them to give me blood, not even to save my life. I certainly can’t do this for 9 full months (or even just 24 weeks), no way. I’d be the one going to jail.
So what do we do when our legally a person fetus is using someone’s body against their will? When they are doing it without the pregnant person’s consent? Do we send them to court? Do we put them in jail? Do we ask them why they’re leaching off the life of this unwilling, unconsenting person? Do we penalize them for that? We penalize everyone else.
I am anticipating a ‘well we don’t KILL! someone who steals a kidney/liver/lung/blood from an unconsenting person’. And yes you are correct in that assessment. In the US at least. But for the purposes of this analogy, I want to point out there is a difference between killing someone and letting them die, legally speaking. There’s a difference between someone bleeding out because they can’t get a blood transplant and putting a gun to their head and pulling the trigger. And remember, legally our person-fetus has no leg to stand on. They have no right to use another person’s body against their will. They just don’t. You can’t get around that, not with the laws we have in place right now (in the US). If you give them that right than why aren’t you giving rights to the people who need kidney transplants to force other people to just give up a kidney. Or blood. Or bone marrow, or what have you. Why aren’t you telling someone they have a right to take my blood by force and without my consent for (at the very least) 9 months? That would make sense right? That would be logical.
Or wait… is a fetus special? Why? Because it hasn’t been born yet? Because it needs our protection. Because it can’t live without the aid of another human being. What about the person bleeding out up there? They can’t live without another human being. Is it the pre-born thing? Why are we giving more rights to the pre-born fetus? What is it about that status that makes them so special? Honestly. I want a real answer here. Why does a pre born fetus have right that trump the pregnant person (not to mention people needing another kidney, or a lung, or blood, or bone marrow or a million other things you can get without killing a person but aren’t allowed to take without consent)… seriously, why?
I would now like to remind everyone that this was just a hypothetical. Fetuses are still not people, they are not babies, they are not children. Are they alive? Sure but so is my kidney. It has living cells. So is the pregnant person for that matter and the pregnant person can think and feel pain and make conscious decisions and… you know choose things.
And I’m still pro choice.
I want to snuggle with this post. I love it.
“One of the things I’m concerned about is that I really want to make sure the races of all the characters are kept. I don’t like it when black characters become white in movies, or things like that. That was something I found deeply problematic with the attempt by some people who had a lot of money and a lot of clout, and who wanted the rights to Anansi Boys, at one point. Somewhere in there, they made the fatal mistake of saying to me, “And, of course, the characters won’t be black in the movie because black people don’t like fantasy.” They were suddenly very surprised that we were no longer interested in selling them the book.”
—Neil Gaiman on the American Gods TV adaptation (via tokenblkgirl)
End Of An Era [Acoustic]
Oliver Boyd & the Rememberalls
hipsterchristrereadsharrypotter:
Oliver Boyd and the Rememberalls - End of an Era (Acoustic)
I will miss the train ride in
And the pranks pulled by the twins
And though it’s nowhere I have been, I’ll keep on smiling
From the times I had with them
I know I’ve posted this before, but it’s just so appropriate today. 5 and a half hours.
Listen
End Of An Era - Oliver Boyd And The Remembralls
With 12 days left until DH Part 2 comes out, everyone needs to listen to this song.
Co-signed.