>P.S. Is MJ and gateway to cigarette smoking? All the major stoners I know
>are also nicotine freaks. What percentage of heapers also toke tobacco? I
>don't know the numbers, but I'd wager it's significantly above the rest of
>the population.
The opposite, actually. People who smoke cigs are more likely to smoke a joint.
(heh. my intro to drugs was in h.s. Mom encouraged me to sign up for a "peer counseling" program where they taught us about drugs, sex, etc. etc. The idea was that we'd be the ones who'd have knowledge that we could better dispense among our peers. Be more palatable to our peers than the principle or guidance counselor. It was one of those programs born in the 70s.
I learned a lot and it made it more acceptable, to me, to do drugs. These were _all_ kids from the PMC btw. And every single one was addicted to something or a heavy user. Sheeit. We went on a backpacking trip at the conclusion of the program and one guy did speed and _then_ climbed Mt. Washington! Nuts. I started dating one guy, naif that I was, who'd run off to puke every time we started a make out session. HEh. heroin addict. I had no clue--not til years later. In my mind, heroin addicts weren't the sons of a biology professors, nor were they star athletes. Same thing holds in my son's high school. The star b-ball player is a total stoner. Can't play a game without being high.
I never did anything worse than spend a summer getting high. I had long straw blonde hair. I'd get high at a party, flip it in front of my face and play Cousin It. You know why we did it? Getting drunk you're too out of control and might, as happend at my 16th birthday party, be susceptible to some idiot who thinks you're ready, willing, and able. Thankfully, a bunch of the guys on the football team -- I was the watergirl for the team--caught him and nearly beat him up. In that social world, you DO NOT mess with the girls in your group! Violate a BIG social norm there. With pot, the girls I hung around with knew we could have a good time, but pot made us totally uninterested in any of that.
At 12:30 PM 4/25/2005, Charles Brown wrote:
>One wicked twist here is that sometimes Black people can get social demerits
>for dressing too fancifly or too "Black". Cf. "Superfly".
No shit. Like the grad students in a feminist theory course, during one of those consciousness raising sessions. I was just dressing that way 'coz I wanted to be PMC! Basically, I dressed that way because I couldn't afford to have both good clothes and casual clothes, so all I had was the good clothes I'd manage to find a t a thrift shop. And, o' course, when I mentioned this to a class, when doing my sociology of property lecture, a gasp let out across the lecture hall. OH. MY. God. Such trash. Some of them were obsessed about it, bringing it up weeks later in class!
Or the time all they could notice was that Green Party rep Howie Hawkins wore jeans and a GP teeshirt to a plenary session. We'd have plenaries, a debate between a rep of one side and the other every Monday. Howie was seen as not giving a crap. Yet, the businessman from the Chamber of Commerce wore a cheap gray suit that was all wrinkly at 9:00 a.m. No one noticed that!
I don't know one man who, as an instructor, get comments on his evals about his appearance. A friend of mine got "Nice legs". another got "cool dress". I recall getting one, "wears great cloths" and I suspect it may have been because it was SUNY Oswego which is such a gray drab place, anything would look good there. I certainly don't see how skirts and sweater "look nice" in any special wear. And ther was one sweater I wore, dang, I had a picture of me in that outfit. Nasty! The booty was looking mighty wide in that one! :)
So, maybe there are some men who get these comments, I don't know. But it sure bugs me! It sure bugs me that faculty sat around and had a problem with the biker chick one potential faculty member wore. I'll bet they wouldn't have had much of a problem with it, had she not been from *gasp* a community college background -- which, in spite of her obvious accomplishments, working with one of the most renown sociologists at the time, she was seriously considered as an 'also-ran' because of that. It made me sick.
Oh, and the time Patricia Hill Collins spoke. She wore a nice turquoise business suit with a scarf. And yet, in a feminist theory course afterward, one white woman had the audacity to ask, "Why isn't she wearing African dress." !!!!!!!!! The three black women in the class got up and left and I'm glad. They were right to do so. Patricia Hill Collins is supposed to "wear" her politics?! She's 'bad' because she dresses in conservative suited skirts?
Disgusting.
I remember going to a conference as an undergrad. I sat near Linda Alcoff, who I just fell in love with. I'll admit that I thought it was great that she wore this beautiful light blue dress. She wore eye shadow and painted her nails. It was nice to see that, instead of the typical feminist dress of the time: dangly earings, long flowing skirts, funky sweater, peasant blouses, etc. They didn't look bad and were quite hip and attractive. It was just nice to see someone wear something that wasn't cowtowing to the feminist attire popular at the time. _And_ being from Latin America, she didn't shave her legs! Of course, in the US, not shaving your legs would be perceived as lazy and icky. Why, I'll bet she didn't shave her bush either!
http://www.redhatsociety.com/ These people think they look nice. I beg to differ. Might have pretty clothes but together. Just. Plain. Ugh. But who am I to say?! And you know, I think they do it because, all their lives they've had to dress a certain way. In their dotage, they say fuck it. Good on 'em.
I have no problem with people wanting to look nice. I have a BIG problem with people believing that other people should learn it by osmosis AND I have a big problem with amorphous claims about beauty and ugliness. If you're going to make the claim, show pics! That you or I or anyone else says it's beatuful or ugly. Might as well say, "know it when i see it." Just nonsense!
"We live under the Confederacy. We're a podunk bunch of swaggering pious hicks."
--Bruce Sterling