Remember back about two years ago when legalized marijuana had not yet turned into the colossal white elephant bust of today, and Flow Canna came to town to the musical accompaniment of bugles blowing, chorale groups singing and the occasional gong?
Ah, so yesterday.
Today Flow Canna, which took over the old Fetzer property just north of town, has crawled back to wherever it came from, taking its invisible profits and promises along with it.
The dishonest propaganda from loud weed advocates has at last delivered legal cannabis straight into the reality they helped create. It ain’t a pretty picture. Marijuana prices haven’t been this low since Wavy Gravy was in third grade selling classmates ditchweed at $5 a lid.
Down Hopland way the old Solar Living complex, once a mysterious confection of hippie dreams made semi-practical, sold what remained of its soul to the gods of marijuana a few years ago. Today the whole thing is empty weedy acreage, and not the weedy they’d hoped.
Marijuana excess is being sold off by growers hoping to recover their trimming costs, which is like Budweiser cutting the price of a six-pack down just enough to pay workers on the bottling line. Anheuser-Busch could do that for a few fiscal quarters; Flow Canna couldn’t.
Furies on the Left
When “hate crimes” became punishable and “hate speech” became a target, we didn’t have to look too far down the road to see the eventual grotesqueries the practices would morph into.
Hate Crimes enhance penalties based on what the defendant was supposedly thinking at the time he took a swing at the victim. It was quickly obvious only members of certain demographic segments could possibly be charged with a hate crime. And Hate Speech was, from Day One, a weapon unleashed against ideas progressives found offensive, meaning ideas progressive didn’t like.
Today our liberal friends would do themselves, and society, a favor by taking a minute to examine where “Hate Speech” accusations have brought us. A recent opinion piece in the UDJ from former County Supervisor John McCowen (as sane and sober a local politician as we have) dissected the tenure of Carmel Angelo and found it wanting. (Note: Ms. Angelo is soon to retire with an annual pension far north of $100,000 a year.
McCowen’s thoughtful piece has been attacked as, of all things, “Hate Speech.” (Inside Tip: Carmel Angelo is a tough old broad who can stand up for herself and go toe-to-toe with John McCowen. Or anyone.)
It’s well past the time for reasonable Democrats to draw the line on the dangerous censorship and preposterous accusations their leftist allies espouse. A politician criticizing another county politician is out of line?
Well then, what isn’t?
Find an ugly QB
Dear wife Trophy was swooning and sighing at the sight of the helmet-less ‘49er quarterback, Jimmy Garoppolo, during last week’s televised game with the Rams. So dang cute, that feller!
It brought me to wondering whether an ugly quarterback exists in the NFL today, or has ever. My guess is an emphatic No, sort of.
All quarterbacks, from Otto Graham and Bart Starr to Joe Namath, Joe Montana, Bobby Layne, Steve Young, Bernie Kosar, Aaron Rodgers, Tom Brady, Kenny Stabler, Roger Staubach, Joe Burrow, Patrick Mahomes and Mathew Stafford score high on the Good Looks-o-Meter. (But, then, Y.A. Tittle.)
Why this is true is a mystery, given that the job is a cold, hard, stats-driven meritocracy. But I suggest having your wife or girlfriend review rosters of Major League Baseball players, apply the same standards, and the results will be similar. Almost every one of the 25 players on the Giants or A’s, Tigers, Yankees or Rockies will be handsome, probably on average not much different from that of male Hollywood movie stars.
(This is not the reality for accountants, journalists, school teachers, Walmart employees, cops, college professors, plumbers or other random professions.)
Mini-Libraries
One of the nicer developments around town has been the proliferation of boxes of books on sticks in front yards all over the west side. I’ve been a frequent borrower but a lousy donor over the years but I’ll soon do better. I’ll only take books in the future.
I’d often wondered if the boxes more or less retained their owners’ original stamp in maintaining a certain genre in their libraries, but with few exceptions I don’t think so. Up on West Standley is a box with a small plaque honoring Richard Kaderli, “A Science Fiction Enthusiast” but on a recent visit there were no sci-fi books.
Further up Standley, on the opposite side, is a library heavy on romance, plus one with the double deadly combination of authors Oprah Winfrey and Bob Greene.
On the Rail Trail stands another box loaded with romance fiction and their interchangeable covers, while the West Side Market has mainstream stuff by John Grisham, James Patterson, David Baldacci and Derek Jeter (?).
(Tom Hine says not to worry, he’ll stuff books into boxes just like always in 2022. TWK, illiterate, only reads books with pictures.)
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