Category Archives: The World at Large

Portugal’s Drug Decriminalization

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Scientific American: 5 Years After: Portugal’s Drug Decriminalization Policy Shows Positive Results
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=portugal-drug-decriminalization

This is a wimpy, half-a**ed decriminalization of marijuana, heroin, LSD and others… it’s still jailable to grow it and sell it, but if you’re caught owning or using it, instead of jail or punishment, you’re sent for counseling. Possibly a small fine.

Walter Kemp, a spokesperson for the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, says decriminalization in Portugal “appears to be working.” He adds that his office is putting more emphasis on improving health outcomes, such as reducing needle-borne infections, but that it does not explicitly support decriminalization, “because it smacks of legalization.”

Huh-huh… he said “smack”.

He doesn’t say what exactly is wrong with legalization. Possibly it just wouldn’t fit into a single column. Possibly because the reason is because people would use drugs and drugs are bad. And that sounds like a weak argument no matter how you phrase it.

Shakespeare & Webcómics & Caterpillars

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Have you checked out the 2009 Season Brochure from Georgia Shakes? You should. It’s big silly fun.
http://r.b5z.net/i/u/10018103/i/2009%20Season%20Brochure.pdf

You should also buy tickets to their shows (and the other theaters around town, while you’re at it), but that goes without saying.

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In the continuing effort to acquire fluency in Spanish, I’ve been searching for good spanish language webcomics as documented in my other LiveJournal, coheteelectrico.

SENI (or Sergio En Internet) has much the same feel as Questionable Content. Twenty-something angst and pop culture references in reasonably-decently drawn cartoon form.

El Maizo is a fairly young fantasy-style strip, which makes it a bit more complicated to read in a foreign language. I can spend 15 minutes trying to find what a word means, later realizing that it’s probably a made-up word specific to the universe of the comic. Like trying to find a definition of Ewok. I like the art of the strip and so I’ll keep reading.

My favorite thus far is El Bulbo, the adventures of a superhero lightbulb. His true calling is to fight monstruos gigantes, but he is often called upon to fight bad-guys who aren’t so bad, such as the Middle-Class Avenger (Clasemediero Vengador), who breaks into banks and forces the tellers at gunpoint to give good customer service.

As a result of attempting to read a superhero comic in Spanish, I’ve had to pick up a lot of action-hero related words:

dejar – to leave, as in ¡déjamelo a mí! or Leave it to me!
explotar – to explode
tirar – to throw, kick, knock over
vencer – to defeat, overcome, beat
soltar – to let go of, release
golpe – blow, kick, bump/collision
mentir – to lie
cumplir – to carry out, perform
sacar – to take out
enejo – anger
bala – bullet
bronca – trouble

That last one I tried to use in class, and my teacher admonished me not to use it. She couldn’t give me the specific connotations of what it means, but just that it was sort of like gang trouble, or a gang fight, or something like that.

I still haven’t found the Spanish equivalent of Scary Go Round or Girl Genius, arguably the best webcomics out there. I guess that’s asking too much.
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When my son calls me up all excited that he has caught another caterpillar AND he got to pet a duck today, I remember that’s why I’m in this cube 8 hours a day and not bumming around living in a yurt on a beach somewhere, and all is right with the world.

Christmas with Skynet

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Last night, I invaded A Christmas Carol.

Dad’s Garage closed Invasion: Christmas Carol last night. Invasion, for the uninitiated, is an improvised version of the holiday classic. The basic premise is that each night, a random character is added to the mix with no advanced warning to the regular cast members. The unknown character is first introduced as the ghost of Xmas past, and then is sprinkled in through the remainder of the show. The cast members must incorporate the new character’s presence into the storyline.

Previously, some of the random characters have been a barbarian, a thief, a department store Santa, a Ghostbuster, and Hitler.

Last year, they did Invasion: Our Town with the same concept using the Thorton Wilder play. I invaded that one as an Indiana Jones-like character. Jesus made an appearance in a different episode.

I invaded Carol as The Terminator. Or rather, an early prototype Terminator, the T-1, “before they added bad breath.”1

Upon discovering that Scrooge was not Sarah Connor, I agreed to join Scrooge on his viewings of the past.

Later on in the show in a poorhouse scene, the husband of Scrooge’s old flame turned out to be John Connor, and a shootout ensued, killing all the poor (the front row of the audience). In the grand finale of the show, I finally discover Sarah Connor, wished her Merry Christmas, snapped her neck, and then we all said “God bless us, everyone!”

I am totally in the Xmas spirit now, humans.

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1 A too-vague reference to the movie that likely no one got. But really, that was for me.