I just got a great email from the CSU Fresno NORML chapter:

Now, I know that you all have been waiting for the results of the vote on the best witty answer to the common pot question of a few weeks ago. If you remember, the question was:

Aren’t you worried about marijuana being a gateway drug?

Per our vote last week, the winner was:

“You mean the gateway to becoming president?”

and at a very close second:

“Marijuana’s not a gateway drug, it’s a greatway drug.”

This week’s question is:

If we legalize pot, what message would that send to the children?

So let’s have at it, Stashers!  What’s your best one-liner comeback to the “message to the children” line?  What other typical pot questions have you heard and what are your snappy comebacks to those?

I’ll be down in Medford, Oregon, for the grand opening of Southern Oregon NORML‘s new Cannabis Community Center.  What are you up to?

We get a lot of emails at NORML with very enthusiastic suggestions about what we oughtta be doing.  As we sit and count the gold bars at our secret island fortress, we read these suggestions and admire the creative thinking and dedicated activism of the cannabis community.  Unfortunately, most of the ideas require the kind of logistics and money that are way beyond our capabilities.

One popular idea is the “Million Man March on Washington DC”.  Now, I love the idea of a million stoners descending on our nation’s capital to demand an end to prohibition, but I also know that a million butts mean a few hundred thousand porta-potties, thousands of hotel rooms, hundreds of staff, permits, insurance, media, stagecraft, and so on.  It’s fun to get an email around April 1st thinking we can just whip up such a march.

The other point would be the idea of picking your battles.  Even if we could raise the funds to pull something like this off, would it be a wise use of money and effort?  How would a million dollars be best spent?  I’d rather give $10,000 to 100 highly motivated local NORML chapters; that distributed type of grassroots support would have a much bigger impact.

But here’s an idea from a certain Hippy from Missippi (that’s how it’s pronounced, I believe) that I think could be fun, cheap, and easy.  Who knows if we would ever get to 1,000,000 postcards, but it only costs a 27¢ stamp and a postcard to try:

Imagine … just for a minute … you are President Obama and you are sitting in the Oval Office going over some things for the people and the mail arrives. The date is April 20th and millions of postcards start arriving. All with a similar message. Each postcard is a scene from a different place in America, not the post office variety, but the tourist type, from folks like me and you and millions of others with just one message:

Legalize Marijuana.

Some suggestions for messages on these cards could be as follows:

• “Yes we can … legalize, regulate and tax marijuana.”
• “This is no laughing matter. Please legalize marijuana.”
• “I support the end of prohibition for adult use of marijuana.”

This list could go on and on, but you get the idea.

If only 100,000 cards reached the president and another 100,000 reached our legislators, it would be a lot more effective, I believe, than the questions that Mr. Obama scoffed at.

This could be repeated each year, with the mailing date timed so that the cards could be arriving in DC on the 20th of April. For instance, this year the postcards could be mailed on Friday, April 17th and a great majority will arrive on the 20th.

How about April 15th?  You’re already sending in your federal taxes, you already have to go to the post office.  What do you think, Stashers?

You know how there are so many drinking games out there – “beer pong”, “quarters”, “take a shot every time Rudy Giuliani says ‘September the 11th’ in a press conference” – but what are the toking games? Do you have game you play with friends involving the smoking of weed as part of the game’s punishment (and as Doug MacKenzie once said, “the punishment’s not too bad, eh?”)

Just the other night my friends were over to watch The Lord of the Rings Extended Edition on the home theater.  You’ll recall the long pipes the hobbits and wizards would smoke?  Well, I loaded my 19″ blue Gandalf and handed her my 17″ green Gandalf (original glass by Starfish Designs of Bend, Oregon, exclusive supplier of fine glass implements for the Daily Audio Stash) and said, “every time you see a character smoke, you gotta take a hit.”

I had no idea how much smoking there is in The Fellowship of the Ring!  My love of the halfling’s leaf has fogged my mind, indeed, Salumon!  For Two Towers, we had to switch it to whenever you see the Eye of Sauron or an Ent, but in the extended edition there is a nice closing scene of Meri and Pip finding a stash of Longbottom Leaf and being quite baked by the time Aragon, Gimly, Legolas, and Gandalf find them.

Those were the first two weekends.  This Sunday it’s The Return of the King.  Gollum is so cool when you’re high.

Assume that the feds remove marijuana from the drug schedules and completely leave it up to the states to set their own marijuana policy.

Assume that one by one, states will eventually have some form of marijuana legalization, from simply decriminalization (no sales, no growing, but no criminal record or jail for personal pot possession) all the way to full-on farmer’s markets packed with buds and people free to grow their own.

Given those assumptions, which US state would be the very last to enact at least decriminalization of marijuana?  And why do you think that?  Have you ever lived there or known someone who lived there?

My bet’s on Oklahoma or Utah.  Why?  Well, I’ve been to Utah and was baptized Mormon, and I’ve spoken at length with Norma Sapp from Oklahoma NORML about the state of cannabis culture there.

For me it’s Madeline Martinez of Oregon NORML and the NORML Board.  Without her, I would not be here today.  She taught me that you don’t have to be a lettered-and-degreed person to preach the truth because the truth is simple; that you don’t have to have a lot of money to make a lot of noise in the halls of power, you just need people and perseverance; and that there is nothing shameful about being a cannabis consumer.

What say y’all? Answer in the comments and pass the virtual bowl!

For me, it’s American Pie by Don McLean.  It was in every jukebox in every bar I ever played and every night somebody would plug it in and there you are for the next eight minutes and twenty-five seconds listening to a bunch of drunks misremember the eighteen freakin’ verses and groupwail “bye bye Miss American Pie drove my Chevy to the levee by the levee was dry them/those good ol’ boys drinkin’ whiskey and rye sayin’/singin’ this’ll be the day that I dieeeee” while you secretly hope it’s true.  Then some sloshed genius wants to come up to you during the remaining six minutes and thirty-five seconds of your break and tell you how the song is really all about Buddy Holly and the Rolling Stones secretly plotting to assassinate the Pope or something.

So, what song is it for you?  The comment line is now open…

Can you think of one woman who is so synonymous with cannabis that if you say her name to someone who doesn’t toke up, the first thing that pops into his or her head would be “marijuana”?

Casually mention Cheech & Chong, Snoop Dogg, Bill Maher or Woody Harrelson in conversation to even the straightest of audiences and I can pretty much guarantee that they’ll assume you’re talking about “getting high.” I daresay there isn’t a woman out there hoisting such a sensi standard.

Why aren’t there any true female pot icons? Research shows that most stoners of the daily variety are men and the few female heavy consumers out there that do exist take relatively little interest in pursuing and participating in overt cannabis-related culture. The readers of marijuana magazines, renters of stoners movies, listeners of weed-obsessed music and buyers of pot paraphernalia are predominantly men.

So what do you think, dear Stashers?  How many of you out there are females (Unicorn? Jillian?) and what do you think?  Guys, what’s it like in your circle – more guys than gals?  Here at Oregon NORML, our board is five women, four men, and a majority of our volunteers are female… but Portland is weird; I don’t know what it’s like in your area.  Do sexy pics of pot ladies like Mary Louise Parker (in Showtime’s Weeds above) and the Miss High Times girls (and that naked woman covered in buds in the inside cover ad of High Times) hurt efforts to recruit women to the cause or is marijuana like everything else in America that uses sexy pinup models to promote it?

Check out Mamakind’s column — she does list a whole bunch of women who are active in marijuana law reform, but they aren’t really celebrities, and she lists a bunch of celebrity women who use pot, but they aren’t really activists.

So ladies, where you at?  What can we do to bring in more of you?

Dad sends me old jokes via email from Nampa, Idaho.  Today’s joke works well for some late night Stash:

An DEA agent stops at a ranch in Montana, and talks with an old rancher. He tells the rancher, ‘I need to inspect your ranch for illegally grown drugs.’ The old rancher says, ‘Okay, but do not go in that field over there.’

The DEA agent verbally explodes saying, ‘Mister, I have the authority of the Federal Government with me.’ Reaching into his rear pants pocket, he removes his badge and proudly displays it to the farmer. ‘See this badge? This badge means I am allowed to go wherever I wish… on any land. No questions asked or answers given. Have I made myself clear? Do you understand?’
 
The old rancher nods politely, apologizes, and goes about his chores. 

A short time later, the old rancher hears loud screams and sees the DEA agent running for his life chased close behind by the rancher’s prize bull. With every step the bull is gaining ground on the officer, and it seems likely that he’ll get “horned” before he reaches safety. The officer is clearly terrified. The old rancher throws down his tools, runs to the fence and yells at the top of his lungs…..
 
‘Your badge! Show him your badge!!!’

Anybody else got some good stoney jokes?  Share ‘em in the comments!