Patterico's Pontifications

4/9/2012

“Dude, I’ll Get the Trash in a Second. Where’s My Munchies?”

Filed under: General — Patterico @ 9:27 pm



I’m not sure if every state does this, but in California, organizations can “adopt” a stretch of freeway, in a program called “adopt a highway”:

The Caltrans Adopt-A-Highway Program provides an avenue for individuals, organizations, or businesses to help maintain sections of roadside within California’s State Highway System. Groups have the option to participate as volunteers or to hire a maintenance service provider to perform the work on their behalf.

. . . .

Participation can include one or more of the following activities:

  • Removing litter (work frequency varies with location).
  • Planting and establishing trees or wildflowers.
  • Removing graffiti.
  • Controlling vegetation.

As we were cruising down the 5 freeway through Bakersfield, Mrs. P. surveyed the garbage-strewn section of road and said: “Wow. There sure is a lot of trash on the freeway. Wonder who adopted this stretch of highway?”

I looked up and immediately saw a sign that said the name of the organization that had adopted the trash-covered portion of road: the Kern County Medicinal Collective.

Yeah, it’s exactly what it sounds like.

Your punch line in the comments.

35 Responses to ““Dude, I’ll Get the Trash in a Second. Where’s My Munchies?””

  1. “New Members receive one free top shelf joint with $10 donation or more.”

    And Granddaddy Trim is on sale!

    Patterico (feda6b)

  2. It’s the thought that counts.*

    *things that aren’t true.

    Dustin (330eed)

  3. for some people marijuana is the only maintenance service provider they need

    happyfeet (3c92a1)

  4. “I was gonna clean up the roadside,
    But then I got high”

    Icy (428765)

  5. “You should have seen how clean the side of the highway was BEFORE all 63 members of our clean-up crew got the munchies…and proceeded to throw the empty bags on the highway !”

    Elephant Stone (0ae97d)

  6. No comment necessary. And they won’t care, so what’s the point? Heh!

    nk (52d02a)

  7. They probably just misread the terms and conditions. Most likely on these two.

    Planting and establishing trees or wildflowers.

    Controlling vegetation.

    Noodles (3681c4)

  8. Someone should shame them by sending them this video.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j7OHG7tHrNM

    Noodles (3681c4)

  9. It could be that this way they would prevent someone else from controlling vegetation.

    Sammy Finkelman (ebf45c)

  10. “When they told us we’d get to pull up the weeds by the roadside, we thought they meant something else. . . “

    gwjd (032bef)

  11. I moved from Long Beach to Bakersfield when I bought a plastics company here 5 or 6 years ago. Bakersfield is interestingly like Long Beach was 40 years ago.

    I was asked to install a 1″ thick “bullet resistant” window (same as banks use) for the cashier in one of the local “collectives”. Just being behind the scenes for an hour was an quite an experience.

    Going out to do the installation, I took one of my plastics customers, an entomolgist from England, with me to give him a first hand observation of that part of American culture.

    He said it was all interesting, but he wasn’t exactly sure that product names like “Purple Haze” and “Tangerine Dream” sounded strictly therapeutic.

    Bill Lever (535aa2)

  12. I’m thinking of picking up that candy wrapper, if I can remember why.

    Ken in Camarillo (645bed)

  13. When will white Californians riot?
    The land of fruits and nuts, and Jack Herer!

    sickofrinos (44de53)

  14. Somewhere an Indian is giggling uncontrollably.

    kaf (9cc612)

  15. Far Out Man!!!!

    Ipso Fatso (7434b9)

  16. What?

    MD in Philly (3d3f72)

  17. Kern County Medicinal Collective.

    “All hemp, unkempt.”

    dfbaskwill (ca54bb)

  18. What most people fail to notice is that adoptive highway parents are buying advertising so that politicians don’t have to use tax dollars on things that people actually use such as roads.

    David Wagner (190baa)

  19. I was going to toss out a witty comment and then completely forgot what it was… but it was funny. Geez I’m hungry!

    vor2 (f1a217)

  20. Don’t Bogart that joint road, my friend.

    Cheech 'n Chong (7051ab)

  21. Hippies should hug highways like they hug trees. Preferably in the passing lane.

    CrustyB (69f730)

  22. they haven’t been able to get out there because they ran out of sour diesel to fuel the w*rk truck.

    redc1c4 (403dff)

  23. There are projects like this in other states. Wikipedia says that the first state to do so was Texas. There are references to others such as Missouri, North Carolina, Nevada, and British Columbia.

    I have seen such highways in Virginia and Maryland as well.

    The Ku Klux Klan signed up for a section of I 55 just south of Saint Louis, Missouri so it was renamed Rosa Parks Freeway.

    KKK sponsorship was later dropped from the program for its inability to fulfill its obligations, and the Missouri Department of Transportation adopted specific criteria to prohibit hate groups from future participation. However, the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that any attempt to bar the Klan from participation in the Adopt-a-Highway program on the basis of the group’s purpose is a violation of the First Amendment. The Supreme Court declined to hear the case, so the ruling stood.

    A neo-nazi group adopted a section of highway so the Missouri legislature renamed it after Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel.

    Sabba Hillel (778325)

  24. A gorilla walked into the Kern County Medicinal Collective and started looking over the Weed Menu and price list, when a startled employee came up and began to stare.

    The gorilla asked what he wanted, the employee said it was unusual to see a gorilla in the store, “we just didn’t get many gorillas here at the Collective.”

    “Well, at these prices I’m not surprised,” responded the gorilla.

    ropelight (6e68ce)

  25. I bet it was nothing but Doritos bags and mt dew cans…

    Ghost (6f9de7)

  26. What? It looks clean to *me*.

    d. in c. (ac417f)

  27. Comment by dfbaskwill — 4/10/2012 @ 6:20 am

    Ah-Oogha! We have a winner.

    and, since when did B.C. become a state?

    AD-RtR/OS! (890e6d)

  28. Kern County Medicinal Collective?

    Never heard of it.

    Charles Gibson (6cfe93)

  29. “Stop bugging me, ma! I’ll clean up the highway and get a job tomorrow.”

    Icy (fbdc08)

  30. 🙂

    carlitos (49ef9f)

  31. Dave was supposed to do it, but Dave’s not here, man

    Pedro

    The Sour Kraut (e5f296)

  32. Californias so broke paying union salaries they have to get crippled potheads to clean up trash for free.

    I’m only surprised that the Unions didn’t demand some guaranteed Union Wage jobs out of that.

    SGT Ted (5d10ae)

  33. Hey, OUR potheads are motivated. I know several making good money and I know there are many more.

    I know one who is a Senior VP for a huge Insurance Firm, who worked her way up from being a switchboard operator in the mid 1980s.

    It isn’t the pot, its the head.

    SGT Ted (5d10ae)

  34. The organized cleanup was yesterday?

    Saint Skittles (721840)

  35. I know somebody who used marijuana. He is now in a wheelchair. This happened at age 68, 69. His tenant observed that he lost muscle strength after he used it -that extra weakness in standing etc coincided with a resumption of marijuana use.

    This led to my theory as to why marijuana might relieve pain nausea etc.

    Marijuana contains compounds that the body needs to break down. The liver needs to use something that is short supply in order to do it. To obtain the necessary amino acids/vitamins/whatever protein in cannibalized. But when the liver breaks down protein a lot of vitamins or nutrients not needed to process the marijuana are also released, and that’s what relieves the nausea or causes the other medicinal effects some people are looking for.

    As always the body breaks down what hasn’t been used much recently. This would be muscle tissue or, in the case of marijuana, brain cells involved with short term memory. Marijuana puts people a little bit into pause so they are not memorizing anything. Then the liver’s need for nutrients may take some of that away permanently.

    A caveat: Anything used in the last day or two or so is off limits. But some people may be smoking marijuana almost non-stop for a day or two or more and they’re the ones whose brains go to pot.

    Sammy Finkelman (cd2969)


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