from the USA Today

Olympia Washington - a jury awarded $10,000 to Ramtha School founder JZ Knight in a lawsuit against another spiritual teacher. The jury agreed that Whitewind Weaver copied teaching practices from the seminars in which Knight says she channels the spirit of an ancient warrior. Weaver attended 12 classes or retreates at teh Ramtha school in Yelm before conducting her own workshop in nearby Rainier.

um. yeah. like, wow. kookie.

I gotta figure out a way to start some sort of spiritual racket. an aunt told me several years ago I should start a cult. that I'd be good at it.

gonna have to think about this stuff a bit more seriously.

Sting gone bad: Deputies lose 75 lbs. of pot

CASA GRANDE, Ariz. (AP)

The pinal County Sherrif's Office says a suspect made off with a police vehicle and 75 pounds of marijuana they had used for bait in a drug sting.

Deputies from the county's drug task force set up the deal to close out a months-long investigation in Casa Grande. Court records show undercover deputies agreed to trade a Hummer vehicle for the marijuana they possessed from a prior drug seizure.

But the deal went sour on Wednesday at a mall parking lot off Interstate 10 when five men showed up in the Hummer and a pickup. One got into a sedan with the pot and drove away before a SWAT team could close in. The other four were arrested.

Pinal County chief deputy Jeff Kirkham says such failed stings are rare and played down the effect of losing the marijuana.

an old story, getting hassled by the cops

Back when I was living in Oakland, around '92, I had hair down to my ass. I drove an orange '78 Toyota Corolla hatchback. Kinda beat up. Black and white zebra skin patterned seat covers. The ceiling lining had fallen down so I ripped it out and covered it with black and white checkerboard contact paper (vinyl, really). The lady I bought it from had named it Dabombji ('ji' being an east indian honorific "Da Bomb 'ji'. Get it?)

Anyhoo, in the east bay, not too far away there's a little town called Kensington. It's one of those little conservative enclaves you find in the east bay. Farmer's Insurance had an office there and one day I made an appointment there to get insurance.

So I drive into Kensington and find the street the office is supposed to be on, but I can't find the office. So I drive around the block. As I'm driving around I see a cop car. I circle back around, driving slow, still can't find the office. Cop car still there. Dangit. So I drive around one more time. This time the fuzz pulls me over. Asks me what I'm doing, all that. I tell them I'm looking for the Farmer's Insurance office.

Two cops. An older guy, grey hair, obviously eaten a lot of donuts. Younger guy, obviously wet behind the ears with peach fuzz on his cheeks. It's the younger guy questioning me. So he asks me if he can search my car. I ask why. He says he thought he smelled marijuana in my car. I tell him I didn't smoke pot. Which was sort of true. Hadn't had any in a week. I go "actually, yeah, I do mind if you search my car. But if you wanna then go ahead. Search it."

So I get out of my car and step aside so the young cop can search it. I have my arms folded and I look bored and irritated. The guy is searching all over, CERTAIN I must have some pot in the car. He keeps searching, getting more and more disappointed, and I keep waiting, getting more and more irritated. The older cop is watching the whole time.

I think the older cop finally started to get the idea that they were barking up the wrong tree, because I had gone beyond looking irritated... I was pissed off, but I guess he figgered it was the younger cop's stop so he was gonna let him deal with it.

Finally peachfuzz cheeks gives up on the car and asks if he can search ME. "yeah, okay, whatever." I used to wear a fanny pack. Not one of those humongoid ones you see on tourists, but a small black leather one. Pretty tight, actually. Fit my hippy trip. So he's digging through there. Digging and digging. All I kept in there were, shit I dont remember. My swiss army knife, my wallet. I dunno. guy crap. Anyway, he finds nothing. Then he asks me to put my arms out, I do, and he starts to pat me down.

Now, in a lot of big cities that have a bus system, you can get a paper transfer from one bus to get onto another bus. You know in blue jeans, in the right front pocket there's that tiny smaller pocket at the top? I had put one of those bus transfers in that little pocket, and it had gone through the wash in there. So it had turned into a wad of paper.

The young cop feels that, digs in there all eager, his eyes lit up. He starts tearing it apart looking for weed in it and I go "that's a bus transfer, it got washed."

Meanwhile older cop has seen that it's VERY apparent that they're hassling someone over nothing.

The young cop finally gives up, looking like a total fucking moron. They give me directions to Farmer's Insurance.

my first pot smoking experience

I'll keep the autobiography section here short. Parents divorced when I was in 1st grade. Lived with my mom until I was 13 when I went to go live with my father.

Okay. 1980, the summer before my 2nd year of 8th grade (long story), I went back to Oregon to stay with my mother. I had a good friend there named Adam. One day we decided to walk into town on the railroad tracks. We lived about a mile out of town, the tracks went right through town. So we're walking into town and he pulls out this little baggie full of green stuff. I'd never seen it before but I knew what it was right away. He goes, "you ever smoke any of this before?" I reply, "no." He goes "me neither, I just got this from a friend of mine." The problem we had was we had nothing to smoke it with. Welllll... while being a nosey little shit poking through stuff in my mom's room I saw a little pipe. I told my friend about it. We agreed that he'd wait there and I'd run back and get the pipe. I run my ass back home, get the pipe out of my mom's room and run my ass back.

So I get back and we proceed to try to SMOKE SOME WEED, DUDE!! So we load up a bowl and take turns hitting it. At first I don't think I really noticed anything but as we continued walking into town along those railroad tracks, the visual effect of the railroad ties as you walked along had a strobe effect. Next thing I know we're both giggling like hatters. Laughing our asses off.

The railroad tracks ran parallel to the main street that runs through town. The tracks are about 30 yards behind the businesses on the main drag there. We smoked a little more weed and proceeded to walk up the embankment to a pizza place called Izzy's Pizza. We go in and order some pizza. We're giggling and cracking up over the stupidest stuff. The pizza gets there and we're talking really loud about sprinkling weed all over our pizza. We wind up doing that. We have a couple slices and and then save the rest for later.

We head back to the tracks and are walking along when a train starts coming our way. We go "hey, lets hop on that train! See where we wind up!!" So we're both running after this train and I manage to grab the ladder on the back of a boxcar. I turn back to encourage him to hurry up and he has this look on his face like he can't believe I'm actually riding on the back of a train to wherever it's headed. He slows down and yells at me "I can't make it!" I wasn't going to go train riding by myself so I hop off too. I think he could have made it but chickened out.

So we walk back into town and and wander into a grocery store. Each of us wind up stealing a cheap bottle of wine, like MD-20/20 and something else. I think some Thunderbird. We go back down to the railroad tracks to smoke more weed and drink some of our booze. Get good and ripped and then head back into town. We're wandering around and we see one of those soda-pop delivery trucks. The doors are rolled up. We each grab a six pack of liter bottles of Sprite and run like hell! There's a river that cuts close to town, so we ran and ran and ran to this river. We drink a whole lot of Sprite. We both have to pee really bad so we spend time seeing who can piss the furthest.

So, back to wandering around town. We go by a music store and wander around for a while. Adam tells me that him and a friend of his stole some guitar effects there. The guy who worked there had coke bottle glasses. He couldn't see anything unless he was up really close or looking sideways out of his glasses. We refrained from stealing anything there. But our next stop is a sporting goods store. We go in there and start wandering around. I spot this really keen swiss army knife. I want it bad. I pick the box up and then put it back. I pick it up again and put it back again. Finally, I pick the box up, take the knife out, slip the knife into my jacket pocket and put the empty box back. Oh man, wait till Adam gets a load of this! So we go outside and walk down the sidewalk a ways and I slip the knife out of my pocket and go "hey, take a look at what I got back there." He goes, "oh yeah, well look at this". He pulls out of his backpack a Baretta .25 caliber semi-automatic pistol. The whole time I was picking up the knife and putting it back, he was going up to the display case at the front counter and sliding the rear door back little by little until he was able to grab the gun.

Feeling really jazzed about our loot, we head back to the railroad tracks to smoke some more weed and eat some of our pizza. Along the main track there was a side-track with a bunch of boxcars on them. I head up to a car and pull the lever on the side door and start sliding the door open. I get it open and there's this old black hobo guy in there. I go "oh, sorry man." He goes "no, that's all right, you guys just come on in!" So we climb into the boxcar and proceed to share our leftover pizza with him. After a bit we let him know we have some weed, so all three of us hang out in the boxcar and smoke weed. I'm laughing my ass off and have a hard time hitting the pipe without blowing the pot out of the bowl. The hobo guy gives me shit over that. So we tell him that we'd been been stealing booze and drinking, and he agrees to walk into town with us and buy us some more (with our money). We walk into town, give the guy some money, he buys us some booze as the lady at the register gives us the big hairy eyeball. But she doesn't say anything. We walk back to the boxcars, drink some more, and we start telling him about our adventures during the day. I show him the swiss army knife that I took, he thinks that's pretty neat. Adam decides to tell him about the gun he stole. The guy's eyes light up. He says it's pretty dangerous riding the trains. He asks if he can buy it off Adam. Adam says sure and we agree to meet up with the old hobo later that evening where the guy would give Adam 25 bucks.

We start heading back home and Adam winds up throwing the gun into the river. He's afraid that maybe someone might wind up getting shot with it and some how it would get traced back to him. When I get back to my house I put the pot pipe back in my mom's room. It was one of those small jobs that had a screen built into it. It was bright and shiny and new when I found it, but not anymore! I still have the knife.

Sploid: Potheads busted at the KFC

Sploid: Potheads busted at the KFC:

I was never this stupid when I smoked pot.