Drugs radio haze

Yesterday I drove to the US, when I sat into the car that morning the radio had an interview with a film maker who sounded like a politician (he kept repeating himself in stout declarations that did not go any place) but had made a film on Oxycontin addiction in a West Virginia town called Oceana. The film has the word Oceana in the title, perhaps it’s OxyOceana.

On the way back later that evening As it happens featured a Washington Post Journalist (or was it Wall Street Journal?) phoning in from Malaysia to talk about the epidemic of crystal meth in North Korea. That story was quite perplexing since as the interviewer pointed out North Korea is a country associated (or we associate) with deep poverty and famine. Crystal meth apparently suppresses appetite and he explained the North of North Korea has a bit of money because of the black market dealings.

In between the two stories on every single newscast was the story of Justin Trudeau taking a puff of a joint and Stephen Harper needing to take one and blaming his asthma for not being able to rather than his monumental uptight personality. Also, if he was really asthmatic he’d be doing a great deal more to curb pollution. It began to be quite ridiculous listening to this non-news-story on every hourly newscast with it bracketed by these much more compelling actual news stories. The thematic consistency began to feel slightly ridiculous. There was something Ned the Donkey about both Trudeau and Harper.

At one point just before the border I looked left and noticed a terrific haze on the mountains or whatever precisely was to the left since it was very hazy. In front of the haze were green houses and poly tunnels. A less than pleasant but necessary farming stink provided the aroma to accompany the haze. (forest fire? pollution? low cloud? I have no explanation for it).