Two years of blogging

Hope you’ve enjoyed it so far.

These are my opinions, share yours if you disagree.

Think for yourself.

We are all the ones we have been waiting for if we wish to be. And we can make whatever reality we wish to have, together.

Thursday robot blogging with somebody else’s robot

Cannablog wins award

Thanks to Monkeyfister for awarding this blog a 2007 Golden Monkeyfist — The Golden Bongload Brotherhood (with blonde hash globules). Please also visit these other fine winners:

• Undeniable Liberal — The Silver Sailor’s Tongue award (with double barb cluster);
• Mahablog — The Eloquent Shiva award;
• Arthur Silber — The Silver Shiv award;
• The Command Post — The Bravo Zulu;
• Down With Tyranny — The Bolivar award (with populist cluster);
• The Newshoggers — The Mighty Quill award;
• Pax Americana — The Mighty Sparrow award;
• Tennessee Guerrilla Women — The Golden Volunteer award (enriched with uteri power);
• Pygalgia — The Amber Brew (with excellent head) award;
• Demeur — The Golden Respirator (with upgraded carbon filters);
• Your Right Hand Thief — The Delta Prime award (with hopeful clusters);
• Whiskey Fire — The Jameson award (with ever-full silver tap);
• Survival Acres — The Unsung award; and
• Blue Girl, Red State — The True Golden Monkeyfist.

For the last several days we have been discussing among ourselves the selection of an Au Peer winner. Monkeyfister should be making an announcement shortly if he has not already.

Update: and the winner of the 2007 Au Peer:

Happy New Year!

Sing it back

Sing it back to me.

Open thread.

Every particle has free will within its bounds

Chickens.

Invitation

This is an open invitation to my friends and fellow bloggers, commenters and readers alike; if you would like to be a posting contributor to Cannablog, I would like to share some of the responsibilities here.

Please let me know if you are interested, privately if you prefer.

Is there a pattern developing?

Last update:

• June 25th, 2007

Special comment: “And screwed you are”

This is post #2,000 on Cannablog. Have we made progress since post #1,000?

A good month

Google exercise

“Government Knew in 1974”

Feel free to let me know what you think.

This is an open thread.

Top search of the day

One year of blogging

I probably talk too much about myself as it is, and the posts that I’ve made that I’m proudest of aren’t always the most popular ones so maybe I should just let my readers judge for themselves.

What do you think I could do differently in the next year and which posts do you like the most and want to see more of? Less of? Should I keep going for another year?

Please tell me honestly what you think.

Should I stay or should I go now?

Hat-tip Drifty, who properly suggests that David Brooks apologize to us all for being a dishonest shill. Though he said it a bit more colorfully.

And on that note, Cannablog may soon be moving to a new hosting provider. I might even carry advertisements. Who knows? There does need to be a way for political blogs to be self-sustaining, and political “news” programs far more extreme and dangerous exist on television networks like Fox Noise, supported by advertisers. How do we counterbalance this without a way to “put food on our families”?

Surely there must be ethical advertisers who have products and services I wouldn’t object to, and as importantly would not object to letting me run my blog the way I have been without constraint or censorship.

Eight random things about myself

Ellroon tagged me.

1. All right, here are the rules. 2. We have to post these rules before we give you the facts. 3. Players start with eight random facts/habits about themselves. 4. People who are tagged need to write their own blog about their eight things and post these rules. 5. At the end of your blog, you need to choose eight people to get tagged and list their names. Don’t forget to leave them a comment telling them they’re tagged, and to read your blog.

Okay, here goes:

1. I’m not very good at picking random things about myself to talk about.
2. Unless I am out of town or just waking, you can presume I have taken cannabis within a few hours before or while writing anything here; I would take more cannabis if I could afford it or if I was allowed to grow my own.
3. I have an orphan genetic disease which causes bone pain.
4. I have insurance.
5. I am married.
6. My wife is smarter than me.
7. That didn’t count, because it wasn’t about me.
8. This is an eighth thing and I’m not sure if it’s about me but I wrote it.
9. I don’t actually follow directions unless I must or feel like it.

Now tagging:

• Donna Woodka of Changing Places
• Pygalgia of Pygalgia
• Creature of State of the Day
• Charles of Mercury Rising
• Ombudsben of Ombudsben
• Mimus Pauly of Mockingbird’s Medley
• Mustang Bobby of Bark Bark Woof Woof
• and of course Monkeyfister, but he’s moving and offline for a few days.

One miiillion hits…

driftglass, who doesn’t ever link here, but I still read his blog anyhow.

On that account, or for no particular reason, this is an open thread if anyone feels like using it.

Intertubal convergence

NTodd, Sheldon Richman.

Interplanetary express:

• Under construction;
• Detour

Site news and thanks

So my pal Monkeyfister says he’s going out of town for the Memorial day weekend, tells his readers to come by here because I always have such great films on the weekend.

I appreciate it, really, but I’m going out of town too.

So I put some things on autoqueue, and you should enjoy them I hope. Maybe Whitishrabbit will post some things as well if she’s around. I may be spending a few days away from the computer altogether, but that doesn’t mean I shouldn’t consider my readers.

If you’re new to Cannablog, welcome.

I’m still here until Saturday morning, so don’t be surprised to see a few more current event type posts until then.

50,000 hits

WordPress says we just hit the half century thousand mark.

This is an open thread.

My ideal post is so briefly stated that my point fits within the title.

Mimus Pauly prefers to use more words.

Open thread

The Machiavelli personality test has a range of 0-100
Your Machiavelli score is: 44
You are a low Mach, you reject Machiavelli’s opinions.Most people fall somewhere in the middle, but there’s a significant minority at either extreme.

Found, or not found?

My wife found it, not me.

Hillary Clinton blogs

at Firedoglake.

Hat-tip John Amato.

Markos gets a pink slip

Sort-of related post:

• On review

Make way for an interspace bypass.

Claire Wolfe, driftglass.

Please handle with care. Not suitable for all audiences. There is nothing to see here, please move along.

Not Recommended listening:

• Roygbiv

Related post, which would be a good place to go instead of here:

• Respect

And a totally unrelated post, which you should not bother with:

• Black market goose liver doesn’t sound like a very good idea.

Floating an idea…

This is a continuation of an earlier post on blogonomics.

What about a dues-optional voluntary association which could work to bring about the following outcomes and criteria for members.

1. Members who are bloggers would receive some monthly stipend which could be very small, as little as a few dollars, but this would be promised every month as long as the member remained in good standing as a member blogger;
2. In order to be a member in good standing, each person would have to be at all times sponsored by at least one other member also in good standing;
3. Any member can sponsor any number of members, and be sponsored by any number of members;
4. Sponsors can withdraw sponsorship at any time and for any reason, but members must have a way to communicate need and have sufficient time to obtain new sponsorship if necessary;
5. Non-bloggers can also be members and would receive no stipend, they must otherwise meet the same requirements and have the same membership rights as member bloggers.

It’s just a starting point for discussion.

On blogonomics

Melissa McEwan, my friend who runs Shakesville (formerly Shakespeare’s Sister), has an excellent post about how we as a blogging community might sustain ourselves. Obviously we can do this out of our pockets and free time for only so long, but we do not want to become compromised by anyone for the sake of a coin. Advertisers will limit what you can or cannot say. Mimus Pauly wrote a long but very good post about this the day before yesterday. For him this must be always a part-time endeavor, his advice — don’t quit your day job (he hasn’t).

But good writers should have a way to write full-time. Good bloggers should be able to make this a profession, and afford to feed themselves and their families without selling out. The alternative is that you will have no good bloggers that do it for a long time, and eventually our whole ecosystem will be corporate shills like we have on the mainstream media today.

We need patronage, we need to do some things to make a network of bloggers that can rate one another in terms of worthiness, and help new bloggers get connected with a source of funding. We need a structure that is more than each of us having a donation box, as patrons may not know about more than a few of the larger blogs, and some of us blog semi-pseudonymously for good reasons.

Cannablog is a blog about cannabis, and I am a medical marijuana patient in California. This is information I have made public and I feel no great concern about my safety in saying so. California law protects patients. The federal government may have other ideas, and that is something that needs badly to change. Though I feel safe now, I am not safe forever, if it does not. But in other states, medical patients who are living and not dying because they take cannabis are constantly at risk of arrest and imprisonment by local and state officials now. If they want to be bloggers and honestly talk about how cannabis helps them, they cannot use their names. This needs to change.

I want to ensure that they can be funded somehow, to be given help so that they can afford to live, so they can feed their families. They are capable of being great writers and bloggers, and if you think otherwise, if you think this blog is substandard in any way, then I would ask you to please leave a comment and tell me what you’d like to see me do better.

This is, for me, a labor of love. I do it because I must do it. I do it because it is more important to try to stop war than anything else I can do, and this is how I can help to achieve that objective. But I must eat. All must eat.

Please help

I need some advice on how to continue to blog as I have been and still make a little bit more than nothing with two clients across the country one of whom may soon cease to be able to afford me due to the financial condition of his main client. I am in no risk of starving, between my wife’s graduate stipend and a bit we got for our condo when we moved we are okay, but we’re thinking we might want to have kids sometime and it can’t happen if we’re already running a small deficit every month.

Another good month

Related posts:

• A good month
• Tidal wave

On vacation until Saturday

I might be posting a bit, as I’ll have connectivity, but it might not be much.

This is an open thread for comments.

Too much music blogging?

Well this is an invitation. It’s not a threat. If you want communication that’s what you get.

Open thread.

Happy blogiversary, Attaturk

Two years old today!

Remembering the future

Where do you think you’re going?

The art of peace — knowing without knowing

Do what I do, and question everything, including yourself — and seek answers. Question this too, unless that creates a redundant construct you cannot escape from.

Opening the threadgates

I don’t know, it sounded kinda cool to me…. What’s on your mind?

This is not encrypted.

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Housekeeping

If you are subscribing to this blog’s site feed (and according to WordPress.com, about 70 of you are on average every day), consider switching to using Feedburner. I’m told it’s much nicer, but let me know if you think otherwise.

Also, I want to remind you that we still have an open blogroll policy. Link to cannablog and I will reciprocate. I do not promise to keep blogs on my list indefinitely, if I feel like removing a link for any reason I’ll do so. But for now and to continue to build out this network, link up.

Meta-observation: Were my words enforceable: Law would say that if you add me, I must add you, even if I could then immediately remove you; Equity says it makes no difference, the result is the same if I do not follow the procedure, I have discretion.

Open thread

Yeah. What he said.

This post intentionally left blank.

A good month

Feedback

I’ve added a feedback page which you can see along the top navigation bar now. Please let me know how you feel about Cannablog so far.

Open thread

I almost never get comments on open threads, but I’ve been getting a lot of off-topic comments on other posts lately so I guess this is a good time to try again.

Thinking bloggers

Ellroon tags me with an award.

Congratulations to the following five bloggers to whom I pass along this same award.

1. ggwfung of Ideas Man,
2. Creature of State of the Day,
3. Chris Dashiell of Dashiell,
4. Doctor Biobrain, and
5. D r i f t g l a s s.

Should you accept this Thinking Blogger award and choose to participate further (but you need not do so unless you wish), you may observe the following participation rules.

1. If, and only if, you get tagged, write a post with links to 5 blogs that make you think,
2. Link to this post so that people can easily find the exact origin of the meme,
3. Optional: Proudly display the ‘Thinking Blogger Award’ with a link to the post that you wrote.

I’d like to thank the little people, the Academy, and of course my lovely wife.

Reciprocal links

I have decided to follow Skippy‘s example and offer to add anyone to my blogroll who adds Cannablog to theirs.

All of the following blogs are currently reciprocally linked to Cannablog.

• Bad Attitudes
• Blog Reload
• Dashiell
• Dohiyi Mir
• Enough is Enough
• Ideas Man
• Jon Swift
• Last One Speaks
• Outside the Box
• Rants from the Rookery
• Skippy the Bush Kangaroo
• State of the Day
• Stress
• The Vanity Press

Make sure you let me know if you want to be added, by leaving a comment for me.

Update: Added so far:

• Evil Mommy
• Allison’s Wonderland

Lewis Libby, the prosecution rests

Summary from Countdown on MSNBC at Where’s the Outrage? via Ellroon.

Update: For those who care to know such things, this is post #1,000 on Cannablog. I should have done something more dramatic?

Light blogging

I am working on a music synthesizer to demonstrate some of the principles that I’ve been studying and writing about for the past several years. Music and color and rhythm are all used to communicate, all can be languages, simultaneously with words and images, and it is done all the time by intuition. Our formal languages for describing them are too limited, our older instruments incapable of retuning dynamically and automatically, excepting the human voice.

So the end result of this is that I will spend less time blogging and more time programming for awhile. On the other hand, knowing myself I will still spend a fair amount of time doing this too, else losing touch with what is going on in the world, but I might have less time or inclination to post substantively.

Blogging isn’t a bad life

Lee Rosenberg (thehim) is looking for a way to blog while keeping his bills paid. Our situation is similar, but in our case the insurance and everything are in place and we have just enough to pay our bills and tread water now. It would be nice if we could plan to have a family but we cannot even imagine it financially now. I cannot complain; we are not starving unless we try to live beyond our means. Once in a blue moon we might even go out to see a movie. (I highly recommend Pan’s Labyrinth.)

Oh, also I blog semi-anonymously. It’s not hard for people to figure out who I am if they care enough, but I have no desire for personal publicity outside those who know me by introduction. I’d love to have a larger readership but I don’t want to write for hire. I wouldn’t mind it if I could find a way to support myself on donations but it would have to be done in a way that would be kept away from me, lest I be corrupted by seeing what I can say that brings in more dollars.

I want to speak from my heart and tell you what seems right to me, so that if I make a mistake it was one not made with a gain in mind. I could choose to become wealthy, it would be easy enough if I had the will to subjugate myself to that end, to put aside my childish blogging. I could be a capitalist like the Goldman family, and I love them very much.

But to do this I would have to turn my back on injustice, to stop looking in the dark corners where people are being tortured in our names. To let the problems of the world be someone else’s problem, I cannot do this. To the extent I can integrate what I do with helping people, I will do it. While the current crisis is ongoing, the most helpful thing I can do is communicate a way that I see through the danger. I could be non-essential, maybe my own thoughts are not as good as someone else’s, but I don’t know that. For the want of a nail, the horse, the battle and finally the war were lost.

Koufax awards

My nominations:

Best Blog: skippy the bush kangaroo
Best Writing: d r i f t g l a s s
Best Group Blog: Shakespeare’s Sister
Most Humorous Blog: Dependable Renegade
Most Deserving of Wider Recognition: Rants From The Rookery
Best Expert Blog: Unclaimed Territory
Best New Blog: cannablog (shameless, this is mine)

Update: I am informed that Shakespeare’s Sister is ineligible for the Best Group Blog award having won last year in that category. I would nominate her as well for Best Blog along with skippy, but someone already did.

Here endeth the lesson

You do not have to do what I do, you do not have to agree with anything I have said. You should figure it out for yourself, and try to find a way to live in peace.