Category: Highdeas

The Fizz by Psycho Somatic

~ johnbrandall ~ 1 Comment

It's getting a bit late for first smoke of the day but there it is. About to take a dip in the pool. Hesitant to puff first but yolo.

What's it gonna be, though? Mason jar with joints upon opening stanks real good. Gonna burn a The Fizz. Sativa. Could make me cold in the pool but should give me ride.

The Fizz. Whew. Head rush. Menthol, fruity taste. Sharp. A spitter. It's early on. There is a bite, I'm phishing my own brain. Acceptable only in small doses. Notice how Buddhist meditation is not about self-searching, or soul-searching. It's the opposite. There is no self, there is no soul. We will return to the nothingness from whence we came. Somehow that still doesn't do it for me. Buddhism offers never-ending life as long as you are willing not to be you. The Fizz!

Soul spelunking, trippy high, face in the mirror, wide-arc. Or maybe it's just the circumstances. Reset-ing...


The full post awaits through here...

Banana Macaroon by High Noon Cult

~ johnbrandall ~ 1 Comment

We are somewhere near the border of New Mexico and Arizona, headed to Tucson. I'm about to smoke some Banana Macaroon, grown by High Noon Cult. I bought a gram of it in Ruidoso, New Mexico, at the R Greenleaf dispensary there. Did that shop go all deli-style? I used to prefer deli-style, a.k.a. bulk. But deli means no package dates, no provenance. Maybe it's better that way, no fussing over dates. What you get is what you get.

I bought single grams of seven different kinds of cannabis in Ruidoso. Made my own sampler pack. Of the seven strains I purchased, this Banana Macaroon was the most visually distinctive. Lots of red hairs. Crystals on mint-green trichomes. Thin, tall, even skinny buds. This gram weighed out to 1.06 grams. It has a pleasant, fruity scent. It's spongy. Soft. Unusual-looking bud.

I am breaking off a little morsel from the skinny totem-shaped bud. We are now in Arizona.

The Banana Macaroon hit well. I used the $6 glass one-ee I (also) bought in Arizona. I have my own glass back home but I don't mess around driving through Kansas, Oklahoma, and Texas to get from the St. Louis area to Tucson. I didn't find the Banana Mac to be especially flavorful but I did taste some cream and some fuel.

It's been a while since I have smoked in a car. I should say, I am riding shotgun. I am not driving. I don't drive and smoke. Not since 2011 when I made a bone-headed nearly disastrous driving decision after just having puffed a one-ee from a dugout. It was about four years ago that I fired up a Grape Kush pre-roll from the Pecos Valley Productions in Roswell right along this stretch of road, Arizona along I-10 headed west just over the New Mexico border. My wife has the wheel the rest of the way to Tucson, so I'm blazing. We'll be in Tucson in two and a half hours.

I'm feeling the fuel. There's an energy in my legs. The rush, the bite. San Simon River, dry. Mountains all around. Ranchland, scrub land, desert, speed limit 75. There are snow-capped peaks on some of these mountains, which is not usually the case. The sky is clear but the air is hazy. Two hours to Tucson, 13 miles out of Bowie. Telephone poles, electric lines. Remorse, regret, second thoughts. This is that bite. The weed goes in and starts pulling skeletons out of your closet, if you have them. But it's part of the process, it's part of the high. It can be therapeutic. This is the hard part, you just gotta get through it...


Click here for the full review of Banana Macaroon by High Noon Cult...

White 99 by C4

~ johnbrandall ~ Leave a comment

Effects (written as the session unfolded)

I run a weed hedge fund. Not really, but that's how high I am right now on the White 99. Will $10,000 buy a trial run of actually sealing these containers? Try a kickstarter, or similar, if I can give anonymously. Or maybe I am just really high on that White 99. Interesting.

I loved the White 99 from Cloud Cover. I'd buy it again. I didn't think I'd buy any more C4 with their lousy packaging but damn this bud is working on me.

I bought some Cindy 99 in New Mexico. It was dry as a bone. I've never had "straight up" The White. I don't think it exists anymore. But I look for it as an ancestor in strains. Note that The White is not in nor does it have anything do with White Widow. You'll find The White in WiFi OG, however. And it's in the lineage, albeit further up, in any strain that has Blue Power as an ancestor, e.g. Apples and Bananas.

This high takes me back to the last part of the 20th century. Those days when I first started smoking marijuana. This is the type of high I got in 1999, 2000, 2001. Before the towers fell.

But that was a long time ago. I'm high and it's cold and it's winter. The sun went away but the birds are still around. Cardinals sparrows chickadees doves one bluebird one hairy woodpecker downs one flicker nuthatches blue jays cardinals and juncos. The sparrows are white-throated and many. I heard one singing but they are not too vocal this time of year. Wait until spring...


Click here for my full strain review of C4's White 99...

‘Scotch Bacio by Abundant Organics

~ johnbrandall ~ 2 Comments

This time earlier in the day after not so much alcohol. As a one-ee, as opposed to a joint. Effects are strong and clear, clear and potent. It's a smooth smoke. I picked up this "super eighth" grown by Abundant Organics earlier this year in Tucson, Arizona. I'd been sitting on it for a few months. Fear not, the jar was competently sealed. The bud was cured. And they didn't short me. 4.72 grams in the jar. Seriously, the Abundant Organics BOGO at Trulieve has to be one of the best deals for legal weed anywhere in the country. Y'all in Arizona have got yourselves a good weed scene.

I had AO's 'Scotch Bacio (short for Butterscotch Bacio) for the first time late in 2022, as a gram I bought at Prime Leaf. I wasn't into the dessert strains or Gelato crosses back then but I was trying just about anything Prime Leaf had on its menu (which was still a great menu back in 2022, but that's a discussion for another day).

Then I picked up an eighth of Butterscotch Bacio early in 2024 from a dispensary in New Mexico. That was the High Noon Cult Butterscotch Bacio, and it was fantastic. I have a strain review of that jar that you can find here.

I cracked the AO 'Scotch Bacio about a week ago. The first time I smoked it was while I was drinking, later in the day, as a joint (.35 grams), after some friends stopped over somewhat unexpectedly (but they were welcome), and it all might have been too much. I got stoned and retreated into myself for twenty minutes or so. Then I was able to unwrap myself and be present in the festivities.

Today I smoked some of the 'Scotch Bacio through a one-hitter and it is giving me a lift. It does have a bite. The experience begins as a drilling down. This is how it begins but not how it ends. You gotta get through the bite. Embrace the bite. The smoke comes in and it takes a look around. It turns over stones. It pulls your skeletons out of the closet. It has me questioning myself, feeling not good enough. Which can be unpleasant. And would be really unpleasant if it were not temporary. I try to accept the introspection, I try to learn something from it...

Find the full strain review of 'Scotch Bacio here...

London Pound Mints by High Supply

~ johnbrandall ~ Leave a comment

Flavorful. Lots of different, fleeting, rotating flavor notes. Some fruit, vanilla, something floral, earth, chem, then black licorice at the end.

My wife returns. House talk. Leaves got picked up from the curb, the easement language is in the deed on the place we are trying to buy. Part of that driveway is on the neighbor's property but at least one prior deed mentions the existence of an easement. Fifty feet wide, for ingress and egress.

The chem-y, earthy flavor of the London Pound Mints lingers. Maybe that's just tar. The licorice flavor at the end of the joint was memorable, unique. Then the flavor parade before it. I've been trying a couple new strains a week, and this has been the most flavorful in awhile. It's 9:30 a.m. This is earlier in the day than I usually smoke. This strain is supposed to be an indica but I don't feel sleepy or stoned, yet.

This flower was grown by Cresco Labs. Then marketed under their High Supply label, which is a discount brand. I bought it at a Beyond/Hello in Sauget, Illinois. I have picked up a few High Supply canisters over the last year. Slurricrasher was the most recent. Before that, I bought a quarter of Kush Mints under the High Supply label. The Kush Mints was not memorable. It was fine. The High Supply Slurricrasher was good, not great. Not as good as the Slurricrasher I bought under the Cresco label. This London Pound Mints seems to be my favorite so far out of three High Supply buys...


For the full review click here. Never any ads. My own independent site. Forever in search of the highs of yesteryear...

Gas Station Sushi: Dream

~ johnbrandall ~ Leave a comment

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…

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

~ johnbrandall ~ Leave a comment

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