Snow Day Veteran

directingfilm:

This year the movie industry made $30 billion (1/3 in the U.S.) from box-office revenue.

But the total movie industry revenue was $87 billion. Where did the other $57 billion come from?

From sources that the studios at one time claimed would put them out of business: Pay-per view TV, cable and…

thelifetimenetwork:

Marijuana and other psychedelics will never be legal because they change your perspective, they shock you out of your normal state of mind, which allows you to start to see the ways you’re getting lied to and fucked every single day. Smoke some weed and watch a movie. Chances are, you’ll notice that the people in it are acting. It all seems so much more fake and make-believe - because it is. You realize that her tears are fake and his shirt was picked out by a professional and he’s not really sad that she’s leaving, because she’s only stepping out of frame then going back to one for another take. You always knew it, but when you’re high, you don’t really buy it anymore.

Smoke and watch a politician. Are they telling the truth? You’ll notice new things you glossed over before - the way they fold their hands or blink too much or laugh awkwardly at things that everyone knows aren’t funny, but you have to laugh, got to fill the silence or you’ll seem impersonal, like you have an agenda. Does Eric Cantor actually believe that corporate wealth is held by “job creators?” Or is he repeating a talking point that someone has prepared for him? Watch closely as his jaw tightens while he tries to remember how to phrase it.

Smoke and watch the news. Is this a stream of worldly information being delivered to you? Or is it a carnival of meaningless distraction, of sponsored segments and stories about new spas and shopping centers opening near YOU with special offers, act now! Watch the anchor’s eyes, you can’t get over how they keep scrolling right to left, right to left, you never noticed it before but now it won’t leave you alone. He’s saying the war is over - but has anything really changed? Where did he get this information? From a man with a satellite phone on the ground in Baghdad? Or from the government press wire?

Smoke and go to Wal-Mart. Jesus that’s a big building, why the hell would any building need to be that big? And what are all of these people so stressed out about. The aisles are packed with individuals, couples and families, all pushing carts full of the most brightly packaged goods, the necessities of life - food, dish soap, clothes, hair products, makeup, chemical beads to improve the scent of their clothes, bottles of the clean water that doesn’t come out of their faucets. How much stuff must go through this place daily? Pallets and pallets shipped constantly from China, Thailand, Indonesia, Vietnam, Mexico, rung up and processed by uniformed wage slaves who can barely afford the very things they handle thousands of daily. Why is that couple arguing over which brand of cigarettes to buy? Don’t they know about marijuana?

Smoke with your friends and you’ll see a different side to them. Watch your tough, masculine friend admit something he’s insecure about, watch a girl you barely know confess her secret obsession with marine biology, and get psyched about it. That’s so cool, marine life is the shit, it’s such a complex ecosystem it blows my mind. There’s a pond behind my house with frogs and stuff, we should go check them out. We should go right now. It feels so right, that the thing you’re smoking, it’s from nature, so why would you not go to nature with it?

That same hyper-awareness that ruined the movie, that turned the news into a horror show, is wholly satisfied by the wonder of the natural world. Watch tadpoles feed on the algae in the shallow banks of the pond while bugs skit across the surface, unaware of the falsehoods and sicknesses of our culture, and you start to feel like you understand how everything works. You tell your friends and they feel it too, and you marvel at it, wondering how many people know about this, or how few, and if only you could jump onto an aisle at the Wal-Mart or kick Laura Ingraham out of her chair and tell everybody, everything would be fixed and nobody would have to die in Pakistan or Iran, if only you could put it into words. You’re filled with such a compassion and understanding that you can’t fathom why they say this drug is dangerous. If it’s not unhealthy, if it doesn’t cause violence, if it teaches you so much, why the hell is this stuff illegal? 

You’ve answered your own question.