What could possibly go wrong? The first marijuana vending machines have opened in Los Angeles allowing those with legal medical prescriptions easy access to the drug. The machines can only be used by patients who are prescribed marijuana for health reason. The machine offers six types: Red Bud, Jamaican, Hawaiian Gold, Ditch Weed, Cheech and Chong Royal, and Spicoli Bong Fodder.
________
Perfect website for bathroom reading: Random History. All sorts of interesting histories on little subjects.
__________
More young men are opting to stay single, and they're creating their own pig culture. This article explores it in great detail, though I admittedly didn't read the whole thing (it's monstrously long for screen reading). It makes the important point: It's part of men rebelling against feminized culture. Society forces men and women together, from the workplace to the watering holes, and the men are expected to act like women, even through women are the newcomers (people who disdain accommodating the Muslims, take note). Guys are better off getting a close group of friends and acting like pigs. It's also chock full of facts, websites, and interesting side lines. Excerpt:
We can argue endlessly about whether “masculinity” is natural or constructed–whether men are innately promiscuous, restless, and slobby, or socialized to be that way–but there's no denying the lesson of today's media marketplace: give young men a choice between serious drama on the one hand, and Victoria's Secret models, battling cyborgs, exploding toilets, and the NFL on the other, and it's the models, cyborgs, toilets, and football by a mile. For whatever reason, adolescence appears to be the young man's default state, proving what anthropologists have discovered in cultures everywhere: it is marriage and children that turn boys into men. Now that the SYM can put off family into the hazily distant future, he can–and will–try to stay a child-man. Yesterday's paterfamilias or Levittown dad may have sought to escape the duties of manhood through fantasies of adventures at sea, pinups, or sublimated war on the football field, but there was considerable social pressure for him to be a mensch. Not only is no one asking that today's twenty- or thirtysomething become a responsible husband and father–that is, grow up–but a freewheeling marketplace gives him everything that he needs to settle down in pig's heaven indefinitely.
__________
The bronzed Oprah. Half Oscar, half Buddha. Not for the easily rattled.
__________
Get used to it: Playground for old people. As the babyboomers age and take their bullying generation of bitterness and agitation into the golden years, they'll be insisting on things like these and using their votes and buying power to make them happen.
Note: Such playgrounds sound neat. I just don't want them replacing children's playgrounds and coming at the expense of other societal goods.
