Breath easy internet, I have returned to my blogging post. Over the last week and a half I’ve been journeying up the Pacific Coast with Bear Hunter . As it turns out, when I try and write on my laptop while in the van I start to puke all over my band mates — hence, my absence from Synthesis Blog. Over the next few days I will be recounting my harrowing journey (in between fascinating posts about pop stars getting busted for drugs, children with weird growths on their bodies and general paranoid-paranormal fodder). Get ready, dear readers. Get your asses ready.

This is kind of an interesting read if you’re bored and curious about what it’s like to live in a Canadian crack house. Here’s a passage to get you hooked…

After multiple failed attempts at holding down a job, my brother took it upon himself to start selling crack to make money off of the situation. It’s difficult watching your mother slowly kill herself, but it’s even more difficult to watch your brother sell her death. Part of me hates him for it, but at least he’s using the money to pay for things like bills and school.

The things that go on here range from terrifying to hilarious. There are also strange little perks to living in a house like this, which most people are unaware of. So ask away. I’m not shy about the subject and I know it’s something most people are curious about.

The girl happily discusses why she doesn’t live with her clean dad, disgusting tales of maggoty ham, the difference between freebased cocaine and crack, and why the cops never do anything about her sitch. She writes pretty well, maybe we should invite her to blog here for us. She’ll probably have a book out and be on Oprah someday.

A 32-year-old British woman could not fool customs agents in Norway when she came through wearing a bulging wig. They became suspicious of the big wig and turns out she was concealing 2.2 pounds of cocaine under there! The woman had glued the cocaine to her head.

She was detained under suspicion of smuggling cocaine. The agents thought she had a lot of hair and suspected it was a wig. The cocaine was glued so strongly to the woman’s real hair that she had to be taken to the local hospital to have it removed. She is now being held until a formal indictment and trial.

Now Amy Winehouse’s nasty beehive all makes sense.

“YAWN”
“Die already, ya fuckin’ slag.”

Source BBC NEWS

Amy Winehouse taken to hospital

Singer Amy Winehouse has been taken to hospital for tests after fainting in London, her spokesman has confirmed.

She was “doing admin” when she became unwell at her home on Monday afternoon but “quickly recovered”, he added.

Her manager’s assistant was able to stop her falling and Winehouse’s father, Mitch, escorted her to hospital “as a precaution”, the spokesman said.

Rodney King will appear in the next season of the VH1 reality show, “Celebrity Rehab With Dr. Drew.” The show highlights washed out celebrities dealing with drug and alcohol abuse. They are put in the care of famous addiction specialist Dr. Drew Pinsky.

King’s beating by the Los Angeles police in 1991 lead to deadly rioting and his famous plea for peace. King will appear on the show with Jeff Conaway, Tawny Kitaen, former Guns N’ Roses drummer Steven Adler and Rod Stewart’s son Sean. The new season will premiere in October cause doesn’t everyone want to watch wacked out stars with really bad withdrawl symptoms? Not so much.

[The following submission was penned by Synthesis Weekly columnist Julia Murphy. She can be reached at ninjatreehugger@gmail.com]

Addiction, The Economy and Environmentalism

What does Rehab have to do with sustainability? It’s like a personalized Superfund site. We don’t have any money in the not-so-Superfund, either, just like we don’t have funding for rehabs.
If you’re a wanton garbagehead, something probably will fall apart to the point where you at least end up with a DUI. And that, my friends, is a long hard row to hoe, costing you an ass-pile of money and the humiliation of DrunkSchool. I’m not talking about some Jäger in your Kleen Kanteen in that boring evening class. You know what I mean. Money or time is what you’ll be out, and probably both.
Economy: Ever seen Rich’s crew on Saturdays and Sundays? Skulking, chastened youths and insouciant fun-loving criminals alike, sweeping up the cigarette butts of the previous night’s revelers? How much money would the City of Chico have to pay fools to do that work? [Ed note: Rich's Crew is a local organization where those arrested for misdemeanors like Drunk In Public, Minor In Possession, etc, clean the streets of Chico weekend mornings.]
How much do people make in California prisons? Well, from www.pia.ca.gov:
“Court-ordered restitution/fines are deducted from the wages earned by CALPIA inmates and are transferred to the Crime Victims’ Restitution Fund. CALPIA inmates receive wages between $.30 to $.95 per hour, before deductions.”
Companies get a 10 percent discount on taxes for using prison labor — plus, they get to put that awesome “Made in the USA” tag on their product! Yay!
Good for PIA for creating a reparations fund (speaking of which, when are black Americans to get theirs?) — but I bet they don’t exempt the prisoners who committed “victimless” crimes.
How many people are in jail on drug charges?
“Drug arrests have more than tripled in the last 25 years, totaling a record 1.8 million arrests in 2005. Drug offenders in prisons and jails have increased 1100 percent since 1980. Nearly a half-million (493,800) persons are in state or federal prison or local jail for a drug offense, compared to an estimated 41,100 in 1980. Nearly 6 in 10 persons in prison for a drug offense have no history of violence or high-level drug selling activity.”
Please — I mean it — check this Web site out: www.november.org/graphs. It’s extensive.
“In 1985, our incarceration rate was 313 per 100,000 population. As of December 2006 it was 751 per 100,000. The largest single factor contributing to this imprisonment wave is a ten-fold rise in drug convictions.”

More after the jump. (more…)