So, the end result is I’ve deleted all the drafts as can’t seem to find as much enthusiasm to finish them off as I obviously had when I started them.  This means of course that some topics I really wanted to mention I won’t because I’ve forgotten them.  That’s not to say the topics were not worth remembering, it’s because I naturally have a bad memory I sometimes rely on my blog to remind myself of things I like!

One campaign that I should mention is one being run by Aviva, it’s their Tell Us Your Story campaign.  They are looking for people who’ve gone out of their way to help others, caring souls (their words not mine!) who have answered the needs of an individual, family or local community.  You nominate them online and could win a £1,000 prize for Story of the Week.   Stories are also voted for by the public, with the overall favourite receiving a specially tailored grand prize worth £10,000. And it doesn’t stop there!  For every nomination made Aviva will be donating £1 to the Street to School programme.

This was a campaign that was brought to my attention about 3 weeks ago and I started to write about it and got side tracked however I was flicking through the newspaper when I actually paid attention to one of the full page ads, it was actually for the Tell Us your Story campaign.  If I’m honest I only paused to look at it because it was almost a page of yellow and it demanded a second look.  That said, the copy was deathly dull and that may explain why I’ve not heard much about the campaign and as I work in the third sector, these things are usually well circulated.

I think that in itself is a shame as it certainly looks worthwhile but I fear it may miss a larger target audience due to it’s ‘lack of life’.  My experience of the people that have the stories to tell is they do not have the time to read 4 condensed paragraphs of marketing techno-babble, hell I can barely do it and I’m selfishly only looking after myself!

In totally unrelated news I bought another painting from Scott Saw.  This one is based on his Axiom character.  Regular readers may recall I bought a few Axiom prints last year.  I probably ended up paying around $125 more than I needed to because I ended up outbidding myself after making my initial auction bid on the wrong account!  That said, I didn’t mind paying more as I paid what I thought was a fair price and allows the artist to know his work is appreciated.

Now I just need to figure out where to hang things, I’ve already started hanging art in the hallway and some walls have more art than wall on show. Like books and tattoos, collecting is a sometimes impulsive, sometimes long drawn ut process but ultimately very rewarding and enriching, even if we sometimes don’t realise it until much time has passed between acquisition and that light-bulb on moment.

And from charity to art to drugs in a few paragraphs!  I was intrigued to read about some new drug (Alemtuzumab) they’re hoping to licence which is based on the THC found in marijuana.  What’s interesting is that because marijuana is natural it cannot be patented so they have to extract it (the THC), jiggle around a proton or two and call it a unique process, earn a patent and small fortune from governments that prescribe the drug as a relief to suffers of MS.

From what I can gather this drug will cost on average £300pm per patient.  How much cheaper to dispense medical marijuana and allow people to self medicate with cookies, tea or an old fashioned spliff and all for far less than £300 per month!  They say it would be drug dealers who have most to fear from the legalisation of drugs, I’m not so sure myself…Drug patents, legalised drugs, is BIG business with a truly global market.  Something to think about huh?

With luck(?!) the gap between posts will reduce over the coming weeks.

If you live in the UK you will be well aware of the recent controversy a legal high known as Mephedrone which has a rather bizarre street name of meow meow or M-Cat.  The reason it’s such a topical discussion is due to the untimely demise of 2 teenagers from Scunthorpe who had taken it.

The first I heard of the deaths was via a news broadcast on the radio on Tuesday evening but by Wednesday morning the media was in a frenzy on how this legal high was killing people, very much like they whipped up a storm when ecstasy first started doing the rounds.  One thing puzzled me and now slightly annoys me.  On Tuesday night the news reports I listened to all stated that the boys had taken mephedrone, gone out to a club and consumed copious quantities of alcohol and also take Methadone.

Now, you don’t need to be a genius to know that mixing any drug is never a good idea but those three? For crying out loud, methadone is a heroin substitute, hardly the sort of thing you would expect a couple of teenagers to want to take to finish off, quite literally, their Monday night rave?  However by Wednesday morning I found very little mention of the methadone use, just that the mephedrone was considered a contributing factor in their deaths and their parents are widely quoted as saying they only took the mephedrone because it was sold as a legal high… So why did these good boys take methadone, a controlled prescription drug?

Following the subject on the news I listened carefully to the words used by police relating to arrests made in connection with the deaths.  The suspects who had been arrested were arrested for supplying a controlled drug.  That’s not mephedrone which is widely available online (tho it is illegal to sell it for human consumption), methadone however IS a controlled drug.  Could it be that the methadone had more of an impact on the death of the boys?  If I were a betting man, which I am, I’d say it was more a contributing factor than the mephedrone.

As someone who has taken a variety of drugs, legal and otherwise I am still astounded by the great number of people, you and old, who happily take pills, powders and potions with no idea what they are actually taking.  Rule No. 1 in my book is Know what you are putting into your body.  With the advent of the internet this is not difficult. Rule No.2 is Be very, very wary of mixing drugs.  I can’t say don’t mix drugs because I have done so myself but I only did so after I had taken things often enough to now what they did to my body and had a good idea what the effect would be.

Of course with all the scare stories in the press right now you can bet your bottom dollar that sales of mephedrone are rocketing as people clamour to buy it before it is banned, which it will if the British Press has it’s way.  The ignorance of the facts and scaremongering by those who seek to blame anything rather than the cause will only widen the appeal, having the exact opposite effect than originally planned.

Remember ecstasy?  It’s all just a case of history repeating.

VBS.TV have a new feature coming out on 12 February which is a love story of an altogether different kind.  Swansea Love Story is about the largely unreported heroin epidemic in South Wales. The film takes an intimate look at the lives of a gang of young addicts, their families and their surroundings. It also examines how unemployment, the breakdown of the family and the nature of love contribute to the dilemmas faced by a group of young people.

The film is co-directed and produced by Vice UK’s editor Andy Capper and Mike Leigh’s son, Leo and was filmed between Spring to Winter 2009 after Andy and Leo made contact with a gang of young addicts through the SANDS drugs agency.

Focussing on Amy & Cornelius, Lee & Leanne, Clint, Kristian and Wills; Andy and Leo following them around their daily lives as they struggle to get money to buy drugs, alcohol and for places to live. During the course of the film, characters get clean and relapse, they fall in and out of love and you get to meet their families and drugs workers.   You also get to meet their drug dealers as well as members of Swansea’s mining and docker community who talk about how the city has changed.  In place of industry there are bars, strip joints and cheap booze outlets and racial tension often spills over into public protest and violence.

Here’s a short trailer for the film which will be released over 6 days from 12 February 2010 only on VBS.TV

Like a lot of people here in the UK, I was in last minute panic mode because I had decided to leave doing my tax return until the last 10 days before the deadline for submission.  My brain knows that it would be so simple to just do all the paperwork at the end of each month so that submitting my return will be a breeze but does it listen to itself? Of course not!  So I had a marathon session with a years worth of receipts and bank statements and finally crunched the numbers, filed it on-line and bit the bullet and paid the tax man what I owed…ouch!  Anyway, I’ve decided I’m not going through all that again so it’s definitely going to be month by month from now on, I only have a few months left before it’s technically time to do it all again!

One of the things I’ve been really keen to blog about is the documentary that’s been running over on VBS.TV, The Vice Guide to Liberia.  Now, you may or may not know much about Liberia, I certainly didn’t know much.  I roughly knew that there was talk of child soldiers who took drugs and what I assumed was media hyped tales of human sacrifices.  One of the reasons Liberia is back in the news, in some places, is due to the ongoing trial of former Liberian President and accused war criminal Charles Taylor at The Hague.  So it seemed appropriate for VBS.TV to release their documentary on what life is really like out there and boy is it scary!

The documentary has been released in 8 episodes and is probably not for the squeamish.  To give you an example of what I mean there’s one scene where a kid of around 13 holds up the heart, freshly removed, from a Liberian General and proudly proclaims that he’s going to eat it.  Yes, this is real life!  They sacrifice innocents (young children) and drink their blood before going into battle, fired up after smoking heroin and cocaine.  Brixton and Croydon seem like nursery school in comparison!  Here’s a little taster of what you can expect.  It’s compelling viewing.

Now, I know that’s quite depressing but fear not, let me end on a slightly more upbeat note. I went along to Gloom Aid which was a charity night in aid of the Depression Alliance.  I swear I’ve never laughed as much as I did that night, after 5hrs of comedy and music my jaws were aching from laughing.  People who know Mr Omneo know he doesn’t laugh a lot so you can be sure it was funny!  I particularly loved Angelos Epithemiou who I had never heard of before, likewise Frisky and Mannish had be howling with laughter so get along and see both of them if you can!

Anyway, whilst Carbon is NOT, Recycling is very much HOT!

I’ve recycled for a long time now because it has always made sense to me.  I’m fortunate that here at Omneo Towers I have a composter for all the kitchen waste so everything gets put to use.  I have my milk delivered by a man who has been driving an electric van for decades and who always takes away my empties.  And of course I separate my recyclables into paper, glass, plastic and tin each week. I have a regular sized kitchen waste-bin and it will sometimes take me 3 weeks to fill it with rubbish. The people who live upstairs from me average that in a day!  I think there are 5 or 6 people living there but even so, a large bag of rubbish a day is a lot!

I generally keep a selection of jars with tight fitting lids in the cupboard because they’re handy for leftovers that you want to freeze but another great use for an old curry sauce jar is a boho chic recycled bong! Never mind going down to some over priced head shop to pick up a glass bong! Just make your own from a few things lying around the house.  To explain what I mean here’s one I prepared earlier…

All that’s required is a jar, a piece of garden hose, a length of aluminium pipe and some blu-tac. I’m lucky as I have a garden hose so getting that wasn’t difficult for me. I will admit to sometimes borrowing some garden hose from various gardens in Sydney, NSW as I replaced lost or stolen bongs while out there. It was in Australia that I trimmed it all down further…a 500ml drinks bottle and the aluminium pipe.

While I’m on the subject of over-priced head shops. Don’t go there and pay £1 for 5 small gauze meshes for your pipes, get an old tea strainer and a sharp pair of scissors and cut yourself some new ones. For an even better bargain go to your local pound shop and buy one of the larger wire sieves which will give you around 20 or 30 pieces the same size but better quality…for £1.

Be a Responsible Stoner, Recycle!