Some call it art. Some call it graffiti. Banksy has a different view of his work:

People say graffiti is ugly, irresponsible and childish… but that’s only if it’s done properly.

The work of the English graffiti artist simply known as Banksy has invaded the Bristol Museum located on Queens Road in Bristol, England. Not much is known about the artist. What is known, is what can be seen through his unique ideas and wild artwork, which steer clear of commercial galleries and has been seen in various cities across the planet.

Banksy once said:

Think outside the box, collapse the box, and take a sharp knife to it.

The fact that Banksy has a wide range of different art styles and techniques, whose artwork pops up all of over the world, leaves one to question if perhaps Banksy is actually a group or collective that run under one identity. Over the years various information has come out regarding Banksy’s true identity, but nothing solid.

Banksy wrote at his website:

I am unable to comment on who may or may not be Banksy, but anyone described as being ‘good at drawing’ doesn’t sound like Banksy to me.

The thing I hate the most about advertising is that it attracts all the bright, creative and ambitious young people, leaving us mainly with the slow and self-obsessed to become our artists. Modern art is a disaster area. Never in the field of human history has so much been used by so many to say so little.

Banksy’s art has been within the Bristol Museum since June 13 and will be on exhibition until August 31. The Museum is open daily from 10am to 5pm, with admission being free.

Samples of his art can be found below.

• Stencil on the Thekla Social entertainment boat, central Bristol.
• Naked Man image by Banksy, on the wall of a sexual health clinic on Park Street, in Bristol.
• Stencil of Charles Manson in a prison suit, hitchhiking to anywhere, at an Archway, London.
• Work on a building in the Lower 9th Ward of New Orleans, Louisiana.
• Graffiti paintings on the Israeli West Bank barrier near Qalandia.
• A painting on a wall near Bethléem.

Really, if you’re nearby, you must check in.

Looks like this 1995 U.S. figure skating champion chose the wrong ice to make a career out of…

On Tuesday, Nicole Bobek, a former Olympic athlete, plead not guilty, via video from the Hudson county jail, to the charges of conspiracy to distribute methamphetamine in Hudson County, New Jersey.

The 31-year old was arrested last week, at her house in Jupiter, FL, after a year long investigation into a drug ring. Bobek waived extradition rights and was sent to the Garden City. Nineteen people have also been arrested in connection with the drug ring.

Hudson County Prosecutor Edward DeFazio said:

She played a significant role in this operation. [...] She was actively involved in the upper echelon of this ring.

Bobek is free on bond, more than likely heading back to her other home in Manhattan, which coincidentally is in the same state where the investigation into the drug ring first began. If convicted, she faces up to 10 years and a $150,000 fine.

A court date has finally been set for actor of Harry Potter fame, 19-year old Jamie Waylett, who was busted back in April for having ten marijuana plants at his home in Kilburn, north London. On July 16th, Waylett and 20-year old John Innis are scheduled to appear in the Westminster Magistrates’ Court.

Waylett plays the character, Vincent Crabbe, the right hand man of Draco Malfoy, Potter’s schoolyard nemesis. Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince is set for it’s world premiere on Tuesday, July 14th at Leicester Square in London.

Five. Five dollar. Five dollar foot lonnng.

Michael Phelps is finally back on the endorsement trail, after being shunned by some of his sponsors and dropped by Kellogs, because of a picture that circulated the internet five months back that showed him toking on a bong. The company that picked up the slack? Subway.

With their sandwich shops soon to be visited by hungry stoners worldwide, the ad execs that came up with this commercial brilliantly targeted the demographic, while at the same time, having it appear as a regular commercial for those that lack the radar for pot innuendo.

Some of the subtle clues:

• So… any coincidence that the video feed freezes on a frame where MP looks like a stereotypical stoner?
• Maybe… the looping soundtrack playing in the background — Thank you for letting me be myself again.
• Or… what about the the vibrant, eye catching colors with encrusted shiny jewels?
• Kicking it… Jared watches goofy shit on TV… you know you do it too.
• Easily the most obvious clue was the URL of the Subway website advertised… nice.
• Perhaps the words phresh, phave, and phlavor are meant for the sub-culture circle?
• Or… the use of the phrase ‘The man behind the marinara.’ What did you see the first time reading it?
• The new logo says it all… way fresh indeed.

As Kellog’s stock went down after they canned Phelps’ contract, Subway only stands to profit from their new push into an old demographic that more than likely has been eating at their franchise since its grand opening. Now, the pot smokers will simply go out of their way to eat $5 foot long subs, letting Subway and Phelps rake in the green.

The Prince of Pot, Marc Emery, is saying goodbye to Canada by way of a “fairwell tour”, scheduled to make its mark in 32 cities, before he is extradited to the U.S. for selling cannabis seeds to U.S. customers.

On Sunday, Emery began the tour in Calgary saying:

I’m being taken to a U.S. prison for something I did in Canada as innocuous as selling seeds, which don’t even have any drug quality, and yet I have to face a five year term for that. [...] It’s difficult to say what will happen in a U.S. federal penitentiary. It’s never very pleasant. American jails aren’t run nearly as well as Canadian jails. [...] I’m going away for a long time so I expect everybody to do their best and pick up the slack for me.

Emery is referring to the fight coming up in form of bill C-15, a federal bill that would impose mandatory minimum sentences for marijuana in Canada. The bill has already passed the House of Commons and it is now in the hands of the Senate. Emery advises activists to back the NDP, the Bloc, and the Green Party — all pro-cannabis political parties.

Emery’s fairwell tour continues in Saskatoon on Wednesday and Edmonton on Thursday.

Robert Buelteman is not your average photographer. He’s not out there taking pictures of lawn chairs and chain link fences, or endearingly fat babies in buckets. He is turning nature into a vision of electricity so difficult and dangerous that nobody else will even attempt it.

Here is a thorough breakdown of Buelteman’s process:

1. Buelteman begins by painstakingly whittling down flowers, leaves, sprigs, and twigs with a scalpel until they’re translucent.
2. He then lays each specimen on color transparency film and, for a more detailed effect, covers it with a diffusion screen.
3. This assemblage is placed on his “easel” — a piece of sheet metal sandwiched between Plexiglas, floating in liquid silicone.
4. Buelteman hits everything with an electric pulse and the electrons do a dance as they leap from the sheet metal, through the silicone and the plant (and hopefully not through him), while heading back out the jumper cables.
5. In that moment, the gas surrounding the subject is ionized, leaving behind ethereal coronas.
6. He then hand-paints the result with white light shining through an optical fiber the width of a human hair, a process so tricky each image can take up to 150 attempts.

The images may not look like much at first, until you consider the ridiculously tedious process behind it (an extension of Kirlian photography).

I don’t know about you, but I wouldn’t mind seeing some of his herb photography.

In a short piece written for CelebStoner, stoner patriarch, Tommy Chong relives and rewrites a little Jackson 5 history, as well as offering up some mighty strange nuggets of advice for the now deceased pop-star.

The Chonger jovially reflects on a time when the Jackson 5 opened for Chong’s group, Bobby Taylor and The Vancouvers. As the tale goes, Bobby Taylor initiated the meeting between the Jackson family and Motown record label founder, Berry Gordy. Once offered a contract by Gordy, Joe Jackson brought it back to Chong for an unusually sober perusal. Chong recalls:

When Joe Jackson brought me the contract, there was a window of opportunity where I could have become their manager, but the thought didn’t cross my mind until decades later.

And so a pairing for the ages was missed by just that much. One can only imagine how far little Michael Jackson would have gone in a parallel universe where his raw music talents were guided by the subtle genius of the Up in Smoke star. We may have been blessed with such pop-mega hits as: You Wanna Be Starting Something (Because My Joint is Kicked), The Doob is Mine, and Black or White (Cookies are Groovy When You’ve Got the Munchies).

Leave the weird shit alone. Sing and dance, Michael – that’s all we wanted you to do… Have a safe and interesting journey, Michael. We will see you when you reappear in another body. We will know it’s you when you open your mouth and the “magic” comes out. We will know.

Don’t try to translate that last bit into English. Just blaze one up and absorb.

New Hampshire is trying to become the 14th medical marijuana state as their state legislature passed a bill on Wednesday that would allow chronically ill patients to seek treatment using medical marijuana. The bill is now on it’s way to the Governor.

Governor John Lynch isn’t like those other drones that blindly follow the drumbeat of the neo-cons and drug warriors. He actually wants to study the bill before he signs it into a law.

One of the smart things that the legislature had done was ensure that patients nor caregivers could grow the marijuana, instead “compassion centers” or non-profit medical marijuana dispensaries will be organized.

Will New Hampshire learn from California’s mistakes? They already seemingly have, by limiting those that can “game the system.”

If you’ve never seen Showtime’s Bullshit! you might not be aware that Penn & Teller, one of Vegas’s most popular magic duos of all time are also a couple of outspoken libertarians (granted Penn does most of the talking). Their cable show, Bullshit!, is sort of a political comedian’s version of Mythbusters. In this particular episode (with the full-length version available here), P+T examine some of the myths spouted by the few remaining drug warriors.

Bob Weiner, featured in the clip, is still at his propagandizing ways on this very day. In a letter discussing a (presumably non-published) op-ed of his, Weiner again reiterates his belief that…

Legalization would be a catastrophe… We must… fight drugs like a cancer.

You can almost hear the desperation in his voice. Do you also get the sense that his entire life’s work (of drug demonization) is on the precipice of going up in smoke?

Like hungry mosquitos sensing fresh blood, reporters were buzzing at a London press conference about Megan Fox and her recent comments she made in GQ magazine about smoking marijuana.

Fox said:

I wouldn’t call it recreational drug use… that makes me sound like I’m going into clubs and using cocaine. [...] I talked about the legalization of marijuana, which I think in the United States it should be. [...] If alcohol is legal, I just think marijuana should be, that’s all.

Fox also mentioned that it’s a toss up between being candid and tight lipped when it comes to interviewing:

I feel like I have the best intentions when I do these interviews and when I speak the way that I do, but it’s unfortunate when journalists choose to knowingly twist the meaning of my words. [...] And that discourages me from being outspoken and honest, but it’s something I want to do. I hate reading or watching bullshit interviews, and watching these things that have been created and presented to you on television, that are fake or manufactured. I am trying not to be one of those.

Regardless of what she says in the interviews, it definitely adds more publicity for Fox and her upcoming film, Transformers: Revenge Of The Fallen, which opens June 19 of this year.

Like many key players in the marijuana legalization movement, outspoken, Craig X. Rubin, Pastor of the Temple 420 Church, has a target on his back.

Rubin was arrested three years ago for running a medical marijuana dispensary through the church, Temple 420, and sentenced to five years in prison. He hasn’t served any time, with his case on appeal and moving through the courts and possibly headed to the highest court in the nation, the Supreme Court. According to Rubin, the city of Los Angeles has been spending millions in trying to bring him down.

This past weekend, Rubin attended the world’s largest marijuana convention, THC Expo at the Los Angeles Convention Center, an event that was funded by Rubin’s family. Rubin has long since claimed that the owner of Apothecary Travel, Bret Bouge and one of the winners of the Cannabis Cup have been working with law enforcement in an effort to entrap him and have him sent to jail.

For the two days of the event, everything was normal, Rubin preached and was there for his supporters and fans of his aspiring acting career. Bouge made an appearance and began harrassing Rubin’s wife, “Mrs. X”.

Rubin commented:

From the stage I saw Bouge acting in a hostile manner with his face less than three inches from my wife’s. I wanted to jump off stage and deal with it, but made a commitment to Oaksterdam to be positive while on their stage. [...] If I have a problem or get in any trouble I go to jail for five years because I am still on probation, so I believe Bouge was there to create a problem, but we just walked away from him.

Lead singer of Los Marijuanos, Rafael “Pony Boy” Ochoa stated:

Todd McCormick, one of the event organizers, was kicking Bouge out of the event until he offered to buy a booth for $1,500 just hours before the event was over.

According to Rubin, Bouge didn’t open his booth nor did he appear to be there to promote his company. Rubin believes that Bouge was only there to cause a scene that might lead to his arrest — right before a hearing scheduled for this month that will look into the seizure of his life savings.

Unfortunately, Judge Leslie Ann Swain will be assigned to the case, the same judge that signed Rubin’s arrest warrant and refused to recognize Rubin being a Pastor. In fact, at Rubin’s trial, the U.S. Constitution or the Bill of Rights could not be mentioned as not to “confuse the jury” — coincidentally the same thing that happened in the Charles Lynch trial.

The irony behind this case is the fact that Rubin has since opened up another medical marijuana dispensary, The Beverly Hills Green Cross, another church that distributes medical marijuana. On May 20th, Rubin showed the judge the minute order that gave him permission to do again exactly what he was convicted for and what caused the seizure of his family’s life savings.

Rubin’s next court date is June 25th. There, his attorney, plans to solicit the court to have the money returned that was seized during Rubin’s first arrest. It seems as if they have plenty of ammunition now to clear Rubin’s name, more so than they did three years ago. The fact that Rubin has opened up another medical marijuana dispensary and has yet to serve any time from being convicted of operating a medical marijuana dispensary three years ago, will only add fuel to the fire.

Prosecutors in Pittsburgh dropped the misdemeanor marijuana charges against Pittsburgh Steelers Wide Receiver, Santonio Holmes on Wednesday.

Back in October 23rd of last year, Holmes had been pulled over by Pittsburgh cops looking for a car that matched his. Complying at the time, Holmes gave the police his mobile marijuana stash (three blunts) as evidence.

He wasn’t arraigned until April 30th and his lawyers planned to question the constitutionality of the traffic stop. Prosecutors agreed, when Holmes’ attorney said the scope of the search warrant was not extensive enough for the police to conduct a traffic stop on him, which in turn violated his rights.

In an interview last Wednesday, professional skateboarder Jereme Rogers apologized for his the actions from early Monday morning of that week, when he took some mushrooms, stripped off his boxers and wound up preaching naked on the rooftop of his house in Redondo Beach. Luckily police were able to snatch him to safety before he wound up seriously hurting himself.

Rogers, the 24-year old athlete said:

It obviously was not an everyday experience. [...] It was a very out-of-body experience. I’ve never had an experience like that. [...] It was obviously something I shouldn’t have done. It was just something that happened. [...] I literally was walking on the edge. [...] They said my balance was amazing.

Redondo Beach police Lt. Jim Acquarelli and other officers were attempting to bring him down without incident. Lt. Acquarelli noticed that Rogers had a tattoo that read “In God We Trust.” Talking about his own religious experiences, the Lt. gained Roger’s attention and the officers were able to grab him.

Lt. Acquarelli said:

He would have fragmented, interrupted conversations with people that weren’t there. [...] He never lost his balance. [...] The potential was there for it. If he had taken a few negligible steps to the right, that would have impeded his balance and would have led to his demise.

Rogers was not arrested and was under 72-hour observation at County Harbor-UCLA Medical Center — charges may be pending. During the interview, Rogers rolled a marijuana joint but didn’t smoke it in front of the reporter saying that he was a medical marijuana patient and registered card holder.

Another celebrity has come out for the marijuana legalization movement. Hollywood hottie, Megan Fox told British GQ Magazine:

I can’t tell you how much bullshit I’ve been through because I will openly say that I smoke weed. People look at it like it’s this crazy, hippy, (jacked)-up thing to do. And it’s not. I hope they legalize it. [...] And when they do, I’ll be the first person in line to buy my pack of joints.

Say marijuana was legalized and big tobacco or big pharma got their grubby claws on it, then plan on it being less than affordable since the government loves to tax and eventually the state would likely follow their lead. Just like the days of bootlegging during prohibition, it will still be grown by people that would wind up selling it on the black market for less than what you pay at stores or pharmacies.

As long as marijuana equates to some form of currency, it will be a never ending cycle. After all, you can start your own microbrew in the comfort of your home even though most of the alcohol we generally consume are sold in stores and taxed. Would we be able to grow our own plants and do the very same with marijuana?

As usual, before the Prince of Pot begins talking, we see him toking — yet this time it seems as if he’s more mentally exhausted than ever. His slouched body language and empty stare into the camera tell us that this man has a lot on his mind these days, issues that have been haunting him since the DEA made him their personal pet project by declaring him one of the top 50 drug traffickers of the world.

Emery and his wife Jodie, deliver the sad news that Cannabis Culture magazine has ceased print publication. The main reasons were the cost (every issue lost $40,000), finding printers and the fact that the articles within the magazine would already be covered by various sources online by the time the magazine was released.

Despite the end of the print form of the Cannabis Culture magazine, they are redirecting their energy into concentrating on their online website Cannabis Culture, and having different people in the scene participating. If interested in the remainder stock of back issues of Cannabis Culture magazine, they are being sold in a bundle package (60 issues) for $100. All of the back issues are also in the archives of their website.

Despite the city of Vancouver’s attempt to shut down his storefront businesses or at least wrapping it up with bureaucratic red tape, Emery still seems to be in somewhat good spirits. He’s willing to basque in the spotlight for his supporters — that is until the dark cloud of the U.S. federal government moves in.

There was somewhat good news on the case against Emery’s friends and employees, Michelle Rainey and Gregory Keith Williams who plead guilty to conspiracy to manufacture marijuana (a charge stemming back to the days when Emery’s seed bank was in operation,) are to be sentenced to two years of probation in July.

As for Emery, his lawyer basically told him he doesn’t have a snowball’s chance in hell in not being expedited to the United States. Once here in the states, he will be stuck here by a sneaky stipulation that will force him to pay whatever fine he is subjected to before he can even think about serving x-amount of time in Canada. He plans to plead guilty to one count of marijuana distribution, which doesn’t have a minimum sentencing or fines. The feds want to give Emery five to eight years and Emery plans to receive less.

Like a true master of the matrix, Emery plans on using his cultural influence and his supporters to pimp the system, particularly when it comes to social networking. His idea is to have people contact the federal judge in an effort to give testimonials or essays on why they should be lenient with sentencing. Unfortunately for Emery, if the government has made this much of an effort to convict him, then they plan to make him an example that the drug war is still on. If that’s the case, I’m sure that they will cover their bases and assign a judge to the case that may not be able to be influenced by any outside sources or parties.