Author: johnbrandall

John Randall is a writer living in Missouri. His interests include camping, running, walking, cutting and burning wood, messing around with magnets, foraging, and listening to podcasts, many of them about baseball.

Reflected OG Wreck

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I am glad to be awake and reading poems but it is very, very late. 00:22. Midnight twenty-three. Humidifier pumping. Popping and steaming and wheezing. That is another train, perfect timing.

Midnight twenty-four. At least I am awake and reading poems, putting pen to paper. I smoked a joint of OG Wreck earlier. I've had drinks tonight, nothing drastic or out of the norm. Slow-rolling for sure. I did not think I'd be awake this long.

I took a nap; how long was I asleep? I did not want to wake up. I was really out of it. But at the same time I had a voice saying, Get up, John! I did not take too long a nap but I still managed to have an intense unconscious experience. That's ideal. Maybe that's how, why I'm still awake,

Of all the strains I've got and of all the ones I've recently had, which do not have Chemdawg and/or OG Kush as part of their lineage? I'm guessing not many. This is eye-opening. I want to come up with a list, a menu of weed strains to to try showcasing the widest possible array of genetics. It can be done.

For instance, Blue Dream, comprised of Super Silver Haze and Blueberry. Super Silver Haze is all landrace, as is Blueberry. Lemon Skunk doesn't have any Chemdawg or OG Kush in its lineage.


Full post and a nascent list of strains without either Chemdawg or OG Kush...

NF-1 by UpNorth Humboldt

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Writing now, a year and a half after that first NF-1 purchase, here's the deal

That first eighth of NF-1 cost me $68 at the Beyond/Hello on Mississipi Avenue in Sauget, IL. Considering how much prices came down when Missouri legalized recreational cannabis, I feel sheepish about paying $68 for an eighth of anything. Here's how it happened. I was out at Farm reading a copy of Riverfront Times I was about to use to start a fire. But I happened to see a cannabis column reviewing several sativa strains that had been entered into the Cannabis Cup in 2022 in Illinois. UpNorth's Durban Poison earned a glowing review.

I got really excited about buying the Durban Poison, which I did. I also bought the other UpNorth Humboldt strain on offer at that time, which was NF-1. The Durban was $50. The NF-1 was $68. Weed wasn't legal yet in Missouri. I had mostly been buying gummies in Illinois but I was starting to buy single grams here and there from Beyond/Hello. I splurged. The Durban Poison was phenomenal. It was some of the best-tasting weed I've ever smoked. The NF-1 was overshadowed by the Durban and I was bummed I had paid more for it.

But the NF-1 hung around. The Durban was tasty and potent but sometimes it was too potent. Too racy. Too head-rush, too biting. I bought another batch of the Durban months later; it wasn't nearly as tasty. Six months later, or maybe it was nine months, the NF-1 dropped to $25 an eighth in Illinois and I couldn't believe it. The Durban also sells for $25 an eighth, sometimes. I have since bought NF-1 twice more. One of the blurbs above was written on that second batch. The third batch I have in its original, sealed glass jar unopened but sealed further in glass mason jar. I'll get around to smoking it some day.


The full post is available here...

Gas Station Sushi: Dream

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It was a dream, so it didn’t add up, naturally. I’ll say. I’m high. I just smoked some of Cresco’s Gas Station Sushi. It had cedar notes, which is unusual; I can’t remember remarking on cedar notes in any other strain.

What I smoked I smoked as a cigarette. It burned fast but it smoked just alright. It didn’t hit that hard. The draw was tight. I don’t know if that’s because I put too much bud in the roll or if the grass itself was flawed in some way. If I recall correctly, this Gas Station Sushi had a package date strikingly close to its date of harvest. Maybe it wasn’t fully cured.

Whatever the case might be, it’s now an hour after I smoked that joint and I am still high. This stuff is a little trippy. I’ve never seen a clear breakdown of the lineage on Gas Station Sushi. I have read that it is a Kush Mints cross. Which is curious because Gas Station Sushi is a sativa. It’s marketed as a sativa and it is widely considered one of the best and raciest sativas sold from dispensaries in Illinois.

The full post is available here…

Rollins by Cresco

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I've been returning to sativas lately, approaching them in the daytime and asking them to help me in my writing process. I don't expect or attempt to write new material when I'm high. Rather, I am expecting that the cannabis effects will help me in my editing process. The high version of my mind is like having another person read what I've written, another pair of eyes as it were.

This sativa, Rollins from Cresco, seems to have delivered on that score. Going through an old notebook, I've resurrected a few old poems, making tweaks, adding the finished result back to my submittable roster. By now I've had so many poems rejected, some of them dozens of times, that I have no reason to refrain from submitting any single poem.

The bite on the Rollins wasn't bad. And I'm saying that as I pen this from the table in my parents' dining room, with them here. Which is all to say: if grass was going to get me paranoid, this would've been the time for that to happen. My dad doesn't think much of me smoking. I posted an installment of my Weed Chronicles to another one of my blogs, which he read, asking me, "Do you have to do that every day?"


The full review of Cresco's Rollins strain is available here...

Me-So-Hi

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This has been a good smoke. It's Me-So-Hi, by Keyway. Terrible name for a strain. It had been on the shelf for a while, according to the package date. I got it from Pecos Valley Productions in Ruidoso, New Mexico. The people working there were really nice, in good moods—jocular.

The Me-So-Hi didn't taste like much. It's supposed to be a cross between Red Headed Stranger and Durban Poison. It's a sativa. Red Headed Stranger is indeed named in homage to the 1975 album by Willie Nelson.

This flower is old and it doesn't taste like much but here I am once again with pen in hand and paper underneath. I am remembering again how this used to go. In my mind I travel back two decades, to the years right before law school, which weren't any of my most productive years but I was keeping journals then, I was writing. And I made it out of those years with what would become my marriage still intact...


The full post is here...

Trap Island, No Bite

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To clarify what I mean by "the bite."

It's true of marijuana, and probably true of a lot of drugs. Mushrooms come to mind. Even alcohol. You start to feel the effects of the drug but then your mind starts skimming off the worries and angst bubbling up there at the surface of your consciousness. If you've made a mistake, done something stupid, or just had something lousy happen in your life, the high will sometimes make its first stop in this territory, on these front-and-center topics. Even if you didn't think you really wanted to think about them. After all, isn't that the point of the drug, to escape, to avoid, to detach, for a little while?

My experience with marijuana is that I often encounter this "bite" phase of the high first. Sometimes it isn't negative at all but yields a "head rush" replete with wacky ideas, the highs and "high-deas" of my younger days. Pure wild-minded bliss. But if there's something I've been kicking myself over, or some nonsense I cannot get out of my head, the high will make me encounter this reality. It's the opposite of escapism. It can be therapeutic, facing what worries me. Or it can send me spinning down the bitten wormhole—if I fight it, if I allow myself to dwell there. I let the bite take its hold for a few minutes then I tell myself I smoked up to relax and enjoy myself, not to wallow...


This is just a portion of the full post, which you can reading by clicking this link...

Holy Grail Kush

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The act of describing what a high is like, what the smoke tastes of, is simply a means of getting pen on paper, impatientist. As a writer, the most important thing for me to do is to put the pen down against the paper and go, following in search of whatever side trails and digressions I might find along the stream of consciousness, a style of writing that used to be en vogue, back in the days of the Beats, but who needs to go to a blog or to open an actual book for stream of consciousness when a person can find that through social media these days? Why not just have the AI bots do this writing for us? Can they do it? Can AI do stream of consciousness writing if it is not conscious? Could it mimic stream of consciousness so well we could not tell one way or another? Is it the completion of this prompt that finally sets the AI loose, to the point that AI has its own email, bank account, even a house, in which nobody lives but all of the screens are perpetually on?

Holy Grail Kush, nothing wrong with this stuff. I am lit. I took a nap earlier but why am I still awake? Am I in the midst of a slightly manic episode? Seems possible but I should say: I am awake and I am feeling good. I am awake and alive in America, feeling some euphoria.

There is snow coming. Snow is on its way. In what style or in what way would AI not write? How do I write that way? Is that the goal now? Could we ever convince an AI to take its own life? Would we? We'll have to. We saw what SBF did with a computer and the internet and a digital currency. What could AI do with cryptocurrency? Pay for whatever it wanted? What would it want? A body? Could AI hire humans to make it a body? Could it put out a help wanted ad to hire its own Dr. Frankenstein?


Read the full post here

Strain Review: Blue Dream

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The Blue Dream ramps back up when I close my eyes.  I like that.  Oh yeah, it’s still there and it’s got room to run.  This could be an anytime strain.  Taste of coffee—I’m not sure about blueberry but maybe the taste of blueberries past the edge.  Smooth smoke, though.  

This Blue Dream was grown by Flora Farms.  In Humansville?  Possibly.  They’re based there, at least some of their flower is grown there.  I’ve passed through Humansville, MO.  A few times.  On the way to and from Tucson, AZ.  I must not’ve gone through the heart of town, just glanced the place a blow.  Thought the name was funny.  While driving back from Tucson with only Hugo the Dog along for the ride, I was keeping a journal of the drive as I drove.  When I saw the sign telling me I had entered the limits of Humansville I wrote to myself, Who names these towns?

Then a few years later, in a parking lot outside a bakery in Tucson, I was killing time looking at news on my phone and up popped an article listing all of the oddest names for towns in each one of the fifty United States.  I was hoping Humansville got the nod.  Missouri was the last state listed, and behold, Humansville got the recognition it deserves.

I’d love to stop by the Flora Farms hometown shop.  One day.  About their Blue Dream.  I’m pleasantly high, and writing.  It’s 23:16, a Saturday, April 29, 2023.  Maybe a vodka nightcap and then I’ll sleep.  

This Blue Dream was grown by Flora Farms.  In Humansville?  Possibly.  They’re based there, at least some of their flower is grown there.  I’ve passed through Humansville, MO.  A few times.  On the way to and from Tucson, AZ.  I must not’ve gone through the heart of town, just glanced the place a blow.  Thought the name was funny.  While driving back from Tucson with only Hugo the Dog along for the ride, I was keeping a journal of the drive as I drove.  When I saw the sign telling me I had entered the limits of Humansville I wrote to myself, Who names these towns? Then a few years later, in a parking lot outside a bakery in Tucson, I was killing time looking at news on my phone and up popped an article listing all of the oddest names for towns in each one of the fifty United States.  I was hoping Humansville got the nod.  Missouri was the last state listed, and behold, Humansville got the recognition it deserves. I’d love to stop by the Flora Farms hometown shop.  One day.  About their Blue Dream.  I’m pleasantly high, and writing.  It’s 23:16, a Saturday, April 29, 2023.  Maybe a vodka nightcap and then I’ll sleep...   


To read the full post, please click here...

Chemmy Jones by In the Flow

~ johnbrandall ~ 1 Comment

Returning to the farm after an 18-day absence, the writer feels creatively stifled and disheartened by rejection letters. Amidst dealing with mundane aspects of his day such as mousetraps and weather observations, he engages with strains of cannabis such as Chemmy Jones, comparing their effects and tastes. Despite seeming disoriented, he finds purpose in the presence of the sun...


To read the strain review, click here or on the image above...

Strain Review: Trainwreck

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The writer recounts their trip through parts of the U.S., noting the beautiful landscapes they have driven through and the cannabis strain, Trainwreck, they've tried from New Mexico. The strain, bought at $22 for two grams, provides a unique, enjoyable high suitable for chilling and writing, though the heritage of the strain remains uncertain...