Stash From The Past

Happy Arbor Day.

In 2008 archeologists found what is believed to be the oldest existing marijuana in the 2,700-year-old tomb of a Shaman in the Gobi Desert. The stash, weighing nearly two pounds, was still green and contained measureable amounts of THC.

Thank you High Times.

MARIJUANA AT THE MOVIES: Romancing The Stone (1984)

The "stone" in the title has  nothing to do with marjuana, but this high-action adventure story does take a stony turn when Michael Douglas and Kathleen Turner find themselves stranded in the jungles of Colombia with a crashed plane filled with bales of marijuana. As night falls, they build a fire to stay warm... not to mention very, very happy.

SKILL OF THE MONTH: CULTIVATING

Most modern marijuana horticulturists prefer plants that tend toward the indica side, mostly because they grow short and fat with thick buds, producing far greater yields in far shorter time periods than sativas. But that doesn't make indica a better smoke. Ask any pot snob worth their pipe, and he or she will tell you that ounce for ounce there's no finer herb in the world than a purebred sativa like Burmese, Nigerian, or Colombian.

For first-time growers, however, High Times recommends starting off with a hearty indica that will give you a nice, heavy yield, along with allowing some room for error while you learn the art and craft of cannabis cultivation. Find a seed company your trust, and ask them for a good beginner's strain with some Northern Lights on it.

HIGH SOCIETY

"Me can roll up two spliffs using one hand - dat iz why iz known as bein' double-jointed, aight?

-Ali G, (High Times Interview, 2003)

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BURNING BOOKS: VINELAND (1990)

Considered a solitary genius, and among America's top contemporary novelists, Thomas Pynchon may be best known for long and challenging epics like Gravity's Rainbow and V., but in this novel he turns his considerable talents to a highly readable evisceration of the War on Drugs by taking one of its victims and making him human. Zoyd Wheeler lives a quiet stoner life in Humboldt County, California, until one day a vindictive DEA man abd a federally funded anti-marijuana operation turn his wife against him, and his life upside-down.

Thank you High Times for the words of wisdom.

THINGS TO DO WHEN YOU'RE STONED

Things To Do When You're Stoned

Find a bingo night

Wander in the desert.

Play hacky sack.
A bit cliche perhaps, but it's a lot more fun than kicking around a bowling ball.

Thank you High Times Magazine for the words of wisdom.

THEY CALL ME MELLOW YELLOW...

In 1972, Mellow Yellow, Amsterdam's first marijuana coffeeshop, opened for business. Today, hundreds of coffeeshops operate in Netherlands, legally selling weed, hash, and pot foods, while countless small store fronts sell marijuana seeds both over the counter and through the mail.

Thank you High Times Magazine for the words of wisdom.

SKILL OF THE MONTH: CULTIVATING

Spanish for "without seeds," sinsemilla growing describes the process of producing the highest-grade ganja possible by planting only females and keeping them all frustrated virgins until harvest. So when you're growing weed, it's all about the ladies. Male plants not only don't get you high, but they're not to be trusted in the garden.

Start by germinating ten seeds and growing them until the seedlings develop sex organs. Get rid of the males immediately, and then eventually select the best of the females to be your "mother plant." Grow the mother plant for a few weeks, and then start taking genetically identical clones by cutting off stems from the bottom and replanting them in small containers. Once you have a large, healthy mother plant, you can keep her alive, and keep her taking clones off her, for many years.

Thank you High Times Magazine for the words of wisdom.

NATIONAL POT SMOKING DAY

Every year on April 20, the High Times phone lines start ringing off the hook. Some of the calls come from our 420-friendly friends, wanting to wish us a happy 4/20(the official high holiday of potheads all across the world). Mostly, it's the mainstream media, wanting to know how 420 began.

As we patiently explain, 420 is not police code for pot infractions, it's not the number of molecules in cannabis, and no, it's not the official time to serve "high tea" in polite British society. The term originated in 1971 in San Rafael, California, when a group of students began meeting every day at 4:20 pm to get high under a statue of Louis Pasteur, eventually establishing their appointment for afternoon "high tea" as a slang term for the act of getting high itself. And so 420 was born, passed along informally on Grateful Dead tours for years and finally finding a home in High Times' monthly Pot 40 column.

Thank you High Times Magazine for the words of wisdom.

MARIJUANA SYNONYMS, F-H

Fatty, fatty-bo-batty, flowers, 420, frodis, funk, G-13, ganeb, ganja, giggle blossom, giggle stick, giggle weed, gold, grass, green, greenery, grifa, gunja, gunji, hanf, happy jack, hash, hashish, hay, Haze, hemp, herb, herbage, hippie lettuce, hocus pocus, homegrown, hooch, hooter, hydro

Thank you High Times Magazine for the words of wisdom.

Happy Passover

Happy Passover to those whom celebrate this time. Or Happy Passover to those who pass the J on this day.

HASH FOR CONNOISSEURS

The best hashish is a black, brown, or blond color, depending on the strain of pot used and the method of extraction. Hash with a green tint contains large amounts of plant matter, which dilutes its potency and flavor. Hash that's gone stale will become brittle and lost its fragrance.

Thank you High Times Magazine for the words of wisdom.

THINGS TO DO WHEN YOU'RE STONED

Things To Do When You're Stoned -

Roll your own (sushi).

Admit you were wrong.

Light a joint with a magnifying glass.

Thank you High Times Magazine for the words of wisdom.

BAT SHIT CRAZY

and this isn't about Natalie Portman in Black Swan.

Bat guano (or "bat shit") has a high phosphorus ratio that makes the stuff essential for growing great organic, resin-soaked buds. Maybe it's the steady diet of bugs, or maybe it's all that sleeping upside down in caves, but either way this poop packs a punch - and pot plants are just batty for it.

Thank you High Times Magazine for the words of wisdom.

GANJA GLOBETREKKING: CARACAS, VENEZUELA

In 2005, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez licked the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration out of his country, telling reporters that the DEA was "using the fight against drug trafficking as a mask to support drug trafficking and to carry out intelligence in Venezuela against the government." So, now that the DEA's gone, Caracas must be stoner paradise, right? Well, don't start smoking in the streets, but Chavez has decriminalized marijuana in the country, which means Venezuela's capital now allows possession of up to twenty grams of marijuana. Nestled into a mountain valley just miles from the Carribean sea, Carcas is also a beautiful and historic city, not to mention the center of a growing revolution in Latin American politics, where increasingly progressive governments have started to openly challenge America's War on Drugs.

Thank you High Times Magazine for the words of wisdom.

SKILL OF THE MONTH: CULTIVATING

The first big decision is the most important: Where should I plant? The biggest advantage of growing outdoors is that sunlight's free, which means no money up front for high intensity lights and no monthly electric bill. Air circulation should also be no problem. Water and nutrients can be supplied by the rain and the soil. Cannabis is an amazingly vital species, and if your outdoor plants take root, you'll likely yield a nice harvest without much, hassle, or worry.

So why bother with indoors? Because total mastery of the garden will allow you to give your plants exactly what they need, exactly when they need it, while nipping any potential problems in the bud. Keep the lights on eighteen hours per day for rapid vegetative growth and then decide exactly when to switch over to the 12 and 12 light cycle that induces the flowering and starts the process of forming fat buds.

Thank you High Times for the cultivating advice.

THE STONE(D) AGE

Evidence of humans utilizing hemp dates from the Stone(d) Age, when hemp fiber strenghtened pottery in China. For the next twelve thousand years, this most versatile plant served humanity in the manufacture of textiles, shoes, ropes and paper.

Thank you High Times for the words of wisdom.

STONER SONGS: "Got To Get You Into My Life"(1996)

There's no overt mention of marijuana in what Paul McCartney later admitted was "an ode to pot," but rest assured that Sir Paul sings of Mary Jane in this otherwise straightahead Beatles' love song. And if you're wondering if that love endured, consider this: In 1980, McCartney was arrested and imprisoned for nine days after attempting to bring more than seven ounces of herb into Japan.

Thank you High Times.

THINGS TO DO WHEN YOU'RE STONED

Run a marathon.

Bartend a party.

Send a message in a bottle.

Thank you High Times for the words of wisdom.

A TALE OF TWO GANJAS

By the time humans discovered how to get high, cannabis had already seperated into two easily distinguishable lines, with sativas growing wild in almost all equatorial regions of the globe, and indicas thriving in Southern Asia and the Indian subcontinent. In each case, the plants were eventually discovered, recognized, cultivated, and bred for their desired characteristics --sativas for straight smoking, and indicas for making hashish and kif.

Thank you High Times for the words of wisdom.

Marijuana Quote by Steve Martin

"I used to smoke marijuana. But I'll tell you something: I would only smoke it in the late evening. Oh, occasionally the early evening, but usually the late evening - or the mid-evening. Just the early evening, midevening and late evening. Occasionally, early afternoon, early midafternoon, or perhaps the late-midafternoon. Oh, sometimes the early-mid-late-early morning. . . . But never at dusk." - Steve Martin

HIGH TIMES ALL STARS: KAREEM ABDUL-JABBAR

The NBA's career scoring leader (that's scoring buckets, not buds) got busted with six grams of marijuana by U.S. Customs officials in 1998 at Pearson International Airport in Toronto, Canada. He was arrested again in 2001 after police pulled him over in Los Angeles. Jabbar smokes pot to treat the severe migraine headaches that have plagued him since his playing days.

Thank you High Times for the words of wisdom.

HIGH SOCIETY

"One of the traditional and obvious ways of controlling people in every society, whether it's a military dictatorship or a democracy, is to frighten them. If people are frightened, they'll be willing to cede authority to their superiors who will protect them ... The Drug War is an effort to stimulate fear of dangerous people from whom we have to protect ourselves. It is also a direct form of control of what are called the 'dangerous classes,' those superfluous people who don't really have a function contributing to profit-making and wealth. They have to be somehow taken care of."

(Noam Chomsky, (High Times interview, 1988)

MEET MARY JANE: G-13

Allegedly, G stands for "government" and 13 for M, the thirteenth letter of the alphabet. Put them together, and you've got G-13, government marijuana, purportedly pinched from the federal Marijuana Research Facility at the University of Mississippi. Whether you believe the story or not, this pure indica unleashes a powerful high and an intense, musky flavor.

Thank you High Times for the words of wisdom.

SKILL OF THE MONTH: CULTIVATING

SKILL OF THE MONTH: CULTIVATING

If you're thinking about planting some herb of your own, you should take great comfort in the fact that Mother Nature has been successfully propagating cannabis sativa since a time long before anyone came along to name it. Simply provide your plants with proper light, air, water, and nutrients, and they will flourish, producing the kind of fat, sticky, resin-coated buds you've grown accustomed to drooling over in the pages of High Times. Give them all the love they deserve, and you can yield enough to put yourself(or your kids)through college, but as soon as you neglect any one of these elements, your ganja will suffer, and so will your harvest. Also, because of society's misguided prohibitions, you'll have to keep your garden a secret, which can involve anything from scouting the ideal planting location in the middle of a remote patch of sticker bushes to adding air filters to your basement grow room to keep the smell of fresh grass from wafting up to the neighbors.

Thank you High Times for the words of wisdom