I have to tell you the story of why I'm here registered at 420 magazine, when I swore in the past to never be documented as any type of narcotic user. Now its legal. There are way too many of us to be paranoid anymore which to me can be kind of sad, as paranoia was always an experience directly relative and an effect of only the very best weed. If you didn't get paranoid even slightly, then the weed was just eh... Before I go on (and I do go on), I'm a writer and if you're not into sitting for a while right now, you might skip my introduction blog here, save it for later, fair warning: I tend to ramble.-
So, I found my way here by researching this grow biz and omfg I just went through the cannabis spider mite battle and am still in the post-battle depression of realizing my huge loss as a clonist. Just made that word up i think it works, not sure how to spell it but in any case I was making babies for a larger grower that supplied my grow starter stuffs in order for me to contribute to the overall supply/demand for starter plants. After a couple of months spent in the learning curve, my success rate had finally reached a level of satisfaction for all involved, meaning, a good productivity flow and profit was nearing a place beyond what I'd ever imagined. I thanked my investors earnestly for turning me on to one of the most damn fun plants to grow, for generously supplying all the necessities and for the invaluable guru grow shortcuts they shared without a tick. I came quickly to love my grow room, each individual plant, mothers and babies and my own small discoveries, battles with fungus gnats that taught me about over-watering, the right weight of rock wool when picked up (too light needs water, heavy means stem rot), new ideas, my hybrid grow method of aqua/hydro experiments to make greener leaves, bigger leaves, training for taller or wider, and ALL that business while DIYing almost everything even though I didn't have to, and therefore cutting overall costs down. I was just a busy little bee whistling while I worked indeed. And then it happened. I got hit with the bugs from hell, cannabis spider mites. Wow, what a fuckin' nightmare.-
These little fuckers are tenacious and like the cockroach, can manifest immunities like a mind reader, like before you even press the red button. You hit them once with poison like pyrethrin or permethrin and follow up for the hatchlings a few days later and the 2nd generation micro-monsters are immune!! So you switch to neem oil or whatever you strategized for the 2nd bombing upon your once peaceful grow nation and well, for me, by this point I would have needed to see a psychiatrist for my own private eebie-geebie bug neurosis. I decided not to go the chemicals of mass destruction way but instead, went organic like most women would and the end result was a little weird but that's me. My grow room was in ruins after going my way to battle and I had had a "moment" with tears and all, being a girl whose recent successes were gorgeous water irises and water lilies, mint, jasmine and well, you get it. I was now challenged by an enemy I never saw in the first place. That in itself, is powerful. I was like, why would I need a 10x's handheld magnifying piece? How overdone! Instead, to my humility, I was told by my investors, who were told by their clients that they just got spider mites from OUR PLANTS!! or more precisely, "...think maybe they might have came from you." unquote.
Yikes. EMBARASSING.-
DAY ONE - I got the news about the presence of spider mites. It was my birthday and my bestie John Barrymore gifted me with a X's -10 hand held magnifying glass that he had kept for years in his own grow room that got shut down by the cops up north years before it became legal in Carmel. Barrymore looked at my plants and confirmed that, "I think you got them, I'm so sorry." I started crying because I'm a girl and it was my birthday, and the hundred rooted babies were going to pay the water truck delivery to come and fill my new above ground swimming pool and I was going to be floating this summer while living this far from my beloved South Bay Beaches. I was fullfilling my years long dream of getting a pool here onto the farm,so I could float here on my hot sweaty, stinky farm, the monster I created to take up my every penny and all my sacred time. Now, I knew it wasn't going to happen. Who the fuck would want my clones with spider mites as an extra? I immediately began research for the strategy that would work for me, for my interior conditions and all relative parameters. First let me say that I live on a farm. I really must give you a good 3rd eye visual and facto-dactos in order for you to understand the method and madness of all things chronic. heh.
Farms are where DE has been a staple item for around 60 years, which is relatively recent and therefore sort of a new method. But its like hemp, its an elemental plant in abundance on the Earth, with millions of uses and all positively effective when used as crucial resolves. Back to my farm then, granted, it's my self made farm in the middle of Los Angeles just north of all the film studios, a large property nestled amidst and surrounded by gigantic apartment buildings where I raise laying hens, rare cats and ducks in their own smelly little pond. The apartment dwellers are mostly Armenian who can view my own little private Idaho from their 2nd and above storied windows and they do that, they seem to daydream as they watch the chickens at feed time or they look to my water garden in their own deep thoughts, both they and I unaware of each other most of the time.-
6 years ago, for 6 months I dug into the backyard to create a large multi-leveled eco-pool and water garden that fully matured this Spring 2017, at 5 1/2 years old. The cattails I brought in from a Kern River camping trip are around 8 feet tall now with a proud full cattail on each. There are beneficial creatures living in the water. Snails that feed on algae. That they found their way here somehow always amazes me. When i'm stoned and grooming the garden, I'll make the hundreds of snails my audience and tell them every snail joke I know, I imagine making them laugh, because I am hugely grateful that the emigrated here. I am sure it took them generations and lightyears like the wandering Jews and eventually found that promised land right here in my backyard. Little creatures that somehow get to where they can thrive, do their wild thing and contribute to the whole shebang in a backyard somewhere in suburbia, that's fuckin' wild, literally.
This spring is the very first time the cattails' flowers appeared which made me realize that my pond and water garden had finally matured and therefore, all was healthy and stabile, lush and thriving. Like, check it out, I NEVER FEED THE FISH. But they grow, they mate, and they multiply.
Cattail plants absorb metal toxins amongst other bad things you need not in your garden or any general grow system. The Great Lakes recently began to use them in the water system for the metropolises in a wonderful act toward sustainability. Nature rocks just right you know, like, bamboo. Bamboo functions just like the cattails and absorb toxins streaming through the atmosphere. All things classified as grass are found to be of the same function around the planet, for the planet and all its inhabitants.
Grass.
I have a pvc pipeline that runs directly to my grow and I need not use nutrient additives but do always PH before every water. Once a week I let Duck-duck swim in the upper water garden where he hunts snails and poops every 20 minutes or less. The fish like to nibble on duck poop LMAO, and the plants get a good root cleaning.-
I run DE through the filter pump every so often but only if there is an algae bloom which I see as an imbalance. The fish, the plants and every beneficial entity residing in my water garden shouldn't have to compete for oxygen. Also, I am a polydactyl cat breeder. My gigantic pepper tree was home to rat packs that used the tree to transit from one apartment building to the next with me in the middle. This is when I started collecting awesome rare breeds of cats. Do I need say, "Rats all gone now."? Whenever necessary, the felines get dusted with DE for flea repellant and killer. So...
Before I was hit with the news of spider mites and possible infestation, I had just picked up a 50LB bag of fossil flour (DE food-grade) for pest control dusting the property all year round; especially summer, when fleas multiply in the heat and dust up here. Pretty gnarly and anyway, itchy hens - not cool.-
I also use DE in the grow, mixed/sprinkled with the bed of perlite in my trays and the tops of the rock wool just beneath the plant, that definitive boundary for burrowing pests vs leaf suckers. All must pass through the shredder! I can't emphasize enough, DE is God's gift to the Earth. -Every 3 months, ALL the animals get a small dose in their food for an ensured deworming.-
Okay, later (still Day One) alone in my research following my poker-face reaction to the news, I came to understand that it is common, almost every grower has gone through it. Consequently, every grower that has gone through, NEVER wants to go through it again. Some grow facilities even issue chemi-jumpuits before entry.-
I was viewed as a pest bringer. I was like, "...why didn't you have a quarantine room anyway, huh? I'm new here, you should know better." Of course I never said that. I have a ton of respect for these people. I was a clonist for the true to Type A - archetypal grower. That is, true growers are righteous and generous. They are kind-hearted, huge-hearted, positive and upbeat. They are hippie-hearted whatever that means.. I mean just love based people with no pretensions. That's why I freaked out in my battle against the spider mites in my grow room. I felt really bad. The truth is, I thought they could have come from them first. Where would I get a cannabis bug? I never had pot plants or pest problems in my garden. But then I read that the female egg-laying mites can hitch a ride on a breeze like Mary-fucking-Poppins to come down in a smooth landing and rest on your spot at any given time. Lay eggs there. Little demon eggs. So, short story longer, here's what I did.-
Here, I want to remind you here that DE is a "mechanical" insecticide. This means, the fleas, ants and roaches or Palmetto beetles (roaches nonetheless) or any exoskeletal pest cannot become immune to treatments and be like Super SpiderMites or anything fantastical like that. Here's how it "mechanically" works: At a microscopic level, the DE is merciless. It shards clean through the outer exo-armour of the pests and, all opened up like that with slashes all over them, they then dehydrate and inevitably die. I know it sounds brutal and it is, but this is war.
Okay, so the psycho within took over.-
I filled a wide brimmed 5 gallon tub with diatomaceous earth and stood beneath the ceiling air conditioner, the switch on "high cool - fan level 3" This is the AC MAXED OUT. I held this tub up to the fan that created a lights out dust storm in my grow room. (DO NOT DO THIS AT HOME WITHOUT EYE PROTECTION OR PAINT MASK) I'm telling you it was like a sandstorm in the Middle East, you could see nothing and only know you are in a blind attack only able to assess the damage when all is settled. Usually depressing but again, this is war.
The suggestions I gathered from research was to be sure to put DE at your door portal, on the grow medium beneath the plants, on air vents and etc., really anywhere they would be likely to pass over. Well, I have worked a very lot in my lifetime and am a huge fan of "work smarter not harder" and that philosophy - coupled with my eebie-geebie bug neurosis made me "go there".
When the DE in the tub was empty, I bolted out of there having been holding my breath and trying to see through my t-shirt that I had pulled up over my face. Slamming the door quick-shut behind me, panting and catching my breath, I locked it up and let the screams of spider mites being shredded play in my cruel barbarian warrior-ess head. I went into my house and made tea, played some piano.-
DAY TWO - Next day, I avoided dealing with the problem for most of the morning and when it was time and just inescapable, I went in. The air conditioner was still blowing hard. The thermostat read 58%. Oh Lord I thought. The air stones were bubbling away and everything, and I mean EVERYTHING was under about a quarter inch of snow. DE that is, L.A. Grower snow. Lord, even my PH meters, my PPM meters with 7 solution all thick in cake batter-now. Boy oh boy, I realized that I had actually lost it the day before. But WAIT. I lost all thoughts of yesterday because suddenly the things I saw in that moment grossed me out. I screamed. Any hairy chested dude would too. What the dust had done, to my cluelessness of the day before was this... the dust had settled upon some grotesque webs unseen before without the defining by the settled dust upon each strand and lo and behold there they were, SPIDERWEBS on a few of the Teenagers! I couldn't take it and walked out, locked it up behind me thinking, eggs hatch tomorrow or the day after anyway. I must have a plan. Must make plan. I went in my house, made some coffee, played some piano. Plants were dying while I tried to play jazz piano. I'm not very good but I have fun playing, so who cares. Noone. I live alone on my farm. The Armenians maybe but who cares, I'm sure they've all decided I'm a nut, always doing something because, "..You have husband? oh. No husband? Oh. You busy not lonely right? Uh-huh..." They are so honest which is super fresh to me, being born and raised in Lala.
I needed to water the mothers but I had spider mites and I couldn't deal yet. It was all too much for a girl, sorry my grow sisters but we are weak when forced to be strong. And fuck bugs. FUCK BUGS. All my beautiful plants covered in DE. It looked like Chernobyl. They micro demons needed time to dehydrate and die, I didn't need to be there. I savored the thought of them all fucked up with slashed up sucker fangs, Fuck them.
Okay, y'all need more background. When my father died in 2007, I flew to the Islands to bury him, the Patriarch of a huge family and me, being 1st Clan and infamous (another story altogether, I'll spare you) was there, a dutiful daughter, an American that the beggar children saw coming from a mile away and motioned sadly with their hands to their mouths that they were starving. See, during the funeral we walked to the Church, a custom. I doled out all my money to these beautiful starving native children. When I had nothing left to give, the procession made a turn into the busier part of the city and there they were, all the starving children of the impoverished that I made no hesitation to give my last travel centavo to, all of them standing on the corner laughing and horsing around with Slurpees and Butterfingers, shooting each other with silly string.
After the funeral and all the weird parties that were customary were finished, the Family took me and my siblings all over the Philippine Islands on the South China Sea side so my brother and I would shut up with our "Where are the waves? We wanna surf! Take us to the beach!!" Stupid, since the beach was everywhere. ANYWAY- -On the way back to the Province of my father, my Uncles asked, "Who needs the toilet?" I did. I was the only one that got out of the van in a little village called Dagupan. Fuck me. We got the news a few days later before my sister and I boarded the plane for LAX, news that Dagupan was going through a mass scabies infestation. Aye. Scabies is the term for the mites that like human blood. Mites. I was the only one that got out of the van. Okay, so you dig? Now you understand my phobia. At home in L.A. is when they showed their presence beneath my skin. You see, mites that prefer humans "burrow" to feast. To lay their eggs. To shit. Etc. When I went to the doctor he told me I had Norwegian Scabies. The name doesn't signify from where they come from but it signifies that I had THOUSANDS of mites beneath my skin. I kept myself in quarantine for 2 months. I went cray-cray. Who wouldn't? It was the worst, most horrific experience of all my lifetimes combined. But just to put icing on the mites little cake was that if I got stoned, I would become violently itchy! I needed a straight jacket. I went to so many asshole doctors controlled by Big Pharma before I found a real doctor, I mean a man that studied medecine because of the passion to heal he was born with and recognized. Sulfur mixed with vaseline applied at bedtime. In the morning. shwer and all the mites wash off and go down the drain. The sulphur caused them to become disoriented. they lose sense of direction and burrow the opposite way: UP and OUT. They become trapped in the vaseline. You wash the fuckers off and clean up the aftermath on sheets, clothing etc.-
will comlete later. this is a draft only
So, I found my way here by researching this grow biz and omfg I just went through the cannabis spider mite battle and am still in the post-battle depression of realizing my huge loss as a clonist. Just made that word up i think it works, not sure how to spell it but in any case I was making babies for a larger grower that supplied my grow starter stuffs in order for me to contribute to the overall supply/demand for starter plants. After a couple of months spent in the learning curve, my success rate had finally reached a level of satisfaction for all involved, meaning, a good productivity flow and profit was nearing a place beyond what I'd ever imagined. I thanked my investors earnestly for turning me on to one of the most damn fun plants to grow, for generously supplying all the necessities and for the invaluable guru grow shortcuts they shared without a tick. I came quickly to love my grow room, each individual plant, mothers and babies and my own small discoveries, battles with fungus gnats that taught me about over-watering, the right weight of rock wool when picked up (too light needs water, heavy means stem rot), new ideas, my hybrid grow method of aqua/hydro experiments to make greener leaves, bigger leaves, training for taller or wider, and ALL that business while DIYing almost everything even though I didn't have to, and therefore cutting overall costs down. I was just a busy little bee whistling while I worked indeed. And then it happened. I got hit with the bugs from hell, cannabis spider mites. Wow, what a fuckin' nightmare.-
These little fuckers are tenacious and like the cockroach, can manifest immunities like a mind reader, like before you even press the red button. You hit them once with poison like pyrethrin or permethrin and follow up for the hatchlings a few days later and the 2nd generation micro-monsters are immune!! So you switch to neem oil or whatever you strategized for the 2nd bombing upon your once peaceful grow nation and well, for me, by this point I would have needed to see a psychiatrist for my own private eebie-geebie bug neurosis. I decided not to go the chemicals of mass destruction way but instead, went organic like most women would and the end result was a little weird but that's me. My grow room was in ruins after going my way to battle and I had had a "moment" with tears and all, being a girl whose recent successes were gorgeous water irises and water lilies, mint, jasmine and well, you get it. I was now challenged by an enemy I never saw in the first place. That in itself, is powerful. I was like, why would I need a 10x's handheld magnifying piece? How overdone! Instead, to my humility, I was told by my investors, who were told by their clients that they just got spider mites from OUR PLANTS!! or more precisely, "...think maybe they might have came from you." unquote.
Yikes. EMBARASSING.-
DAY ONE - I got the news about the presence of spider mites. It was my birthday and my bestie John Barrymore gifted me with a X's -10 hand held magnifying glass that he had kept for years in his own grow room that got shut down by the cops up north years before it became legal in Carmel. Barrymore looked at my plants and confirmed that, "I think you got them, I'm so sorry." I started crying because I'm a girl and it was my birthday, and the hundred rooted babies were going to pay the water truck delivery to come and fill my new above ground swimming pool and I was going to be floating this summer while living this far from my beloved South Bay Beaches. I was fullfilling my years long dream of getting a pool here onto the farm,so I could float here on my hot sweaty, stinky farm, the monster I created to take up my every penny and all my sacred time. Now, I knew it wasn't going to happen. Who the fuck would want my clones with spider mites as an extra? I immediately began research for the strategy that would work for me, for my interior conditions and all relative parameters. First let me say that I live on a farm. I really must give you a good 3rd eye visual and facto-dactos in order for you to understand the method and madness of all things chronic. heh.
Farms are where DE has been a staple item for around 60 years, which is relatively recent and therefore sort of a new method. But its like hemp, its an elemental plant in abundance on the Earth, with millions of uses and all positively effective when used as crucial resolves. Back to my farm then, granted, it's my self made farm in the middle of Los Angeles just north of all the film studios, a large property nestled amidst and surrounded by gigantic apartment buildings where I raise laying hens, rare cats and ducks in their own smelly little pond. The apartment dwellers are mostly Armenian who can view my own little private Idaho from their 2nd and above storied windows and they do that, they seem to daydream as they watch the chickens at feed time or they look to my water garden in their own deep thoughts, both they and I unaware of each other most of the time.-
6 years ago, for 6 months I dug into the backyard to create a large multi-leveled eco-pool and water garden that fully matured this Spring 2017, at 5 1/2 years old. The cattails I brought in from a Kern River camping trip are around 8 feet tall now with a proud full cattail on each. There are beneficial creatures living in the water. Snails that feed on algae. That they found their way here somehow always amazes me. When i'm stoned and grooming the garden, I'll make the hundreds of snails my audience and tell them every snail joke I know, I imagine making them laugh, because I am hugely grateful that the emigrated here. I am sure it took them generations and lightyears like the wandering Jews and eventually found that promised land right here in my backyard. Little creatures that somehow get to where they can thrive, do their wild thing and contribute to the whole shebang in a backyard somewhere in suburbia, that's fuckin' wild, literally.
This spring is the very first time the cattails' flowers appeared which made me realize that my pond and water garden had finally matured and therefore, all was healthy and stabile, lush and thriving. Like, check it out, I NEVER FEED THE FISH. But they grow, they mate, and they multiply.
Cattail plants absorb metal toxins amongst other bad things you need not in your garden or any general grow system. The Great Lakes recently began to use them in the water system for the metropolises in a wonderful act toward sustainability. Nature rocks just right you know, like, bamboo. Bamboo functions just like the cattails and absorb toxins streaming through the atmosphere. All things classified as grass are found to be of the same function around the planet, for the planet and all its inhabitants.
Grass.
I have a pvc pipeline that runs directly to my grow and I need not use nutrient additives but do always PH before every water. Once a week I let Duck-duck swim in the upper water garden where he hunts snails and poops every 20 minutes or less. The fish like to nibble on duck poop LMAO, and the plants get a good root cleaning.-
I run DE through the filter pump every so often but only if there is an algae bloom which I see as an imbalance. The fish, the plants and every beneficial entity residing in my water garden shouldn't have to compete for oxygen. Also, I am a polydactyl cat breeder. My gigantic pepper tree was home to rat packs that used the tree to transit from one apartment building to the next with me in the middle. This is when I started collecting awesome rare breeds of cats. Do I need say, "Rats all gone now."? Whenever necessary, the felines get dusted with DE for flea repellant and killer. So...
Before I was hit with the news of spider mites and possible infestation, I had just picked up a 50LB bag of fossil flour (DE food-grade) for pest control dusting the property all year round; especially summer, when fleas multiply in the heat and dust up here. Pretty gnarly and anyway, itchy hens - not cool.-
I also use DE in the grow, mixed/sprinkled with the bed of perlite in my trays and the tops of the rock wool just beneath the plant, that definitive boundary for burrowing pests vs leaf suckers. All must pass through the shredder! I can't emphasize enough, DE is God's gift to the Earth. -Every 3 months, ALL the animals get a small dose in their food for an ensured deworming.-
Okay, later (still Day One) alone in my research following my poker-face reaction to the news, I came to understand that it is common, almost every grower has gone through it. Consequently, every grower that has gone through, NEVER wants to go through it again. Some grow facilities even issue chemi-jumpuits before entry.-
I was viewed as a pest bringer. I was like, "...why didn't you have a quarantine room anyway, huh? I'm new here, you should know better." Of course I never said that. I have a ton of respect for these people. I was a clonist for the true to Type A - archetypal grower. That is, true growers are righteous and generous. They are kind-hearted, huge-hearted, positive and upbeat. They are hippie-hearted whatever that means.. I mean just love based people with no pretensions. That's why I freaked out in my battle against the spider mites in my grow room. I felt really bad. The truth is, I thought they could have come from them first. Where would I get a cannabis bug? I never had pot plants or pest problems in my garden. But then I read that the female egg-laying mites can hitch a ride on a breeze like Mary-fucking-Poppins to come down in a smooth landing and rest on your spot at any given time. Lay eggs there. Little demon eggs. So, short story longer, here's what I did.-
Here, I want to remind you here that DE is a "mechanical" insecticide. This means, the fleas, ants and roaches or Palmetto beetles (roaches nonetheless) or any exoskeletal pest cannot become immune to treatments and be like Super SpiderMites or anything fantastical like that. Here's how it "mechanically" works: At a microscopic level, the DE is merciless. It shards clean through the outer exo-armour of the pests and, all opened up like that with slashes all over them, they then dehydrate and inevitably die. I know it sounds brutal and it is, but this is war.
Okay, so the psycho within took over.-
I filled a wide brimmed 5 gallon tub with diatomaceous earth and stood beneath the ceiling air conditioner, the switch on "high cool - fan level 3" This is the AC MAXED OUT. I held this tub up to the fan that created a lights out dust storm in my grow room. (DO NOT DO THIS AT HOME WITHOUT EYE PROTECTION OR PAINT MASK) I'm telling you it was like a sandstorm in the Middle East, you could see nothing and only know you are in a blind attack only able to assess the damage when all is settled. Usually depressing but again, this is war.
The suggestions I gathered from research was to be sure to put DE at your door portal, on the grow medium beneath the plants, on air vents and etc., really anywhere they would be likely to pass over. Well, I have worked a very lot in my lifetime and am a huge fan of "work smarter not harder" and that philosophy - coupled with my eebie-geebie bug neurosis made me "go there".
When the DE in the tub was empty, I bolted out of there having been holding my breath and trying to see through my t-shirt that I had pulled up over my face. Slamming the door quick-shut behind me, panting and catching my breath, I locked it up and let the screams of spider mites being shredded play in my cruel barbarian warrior-ess head. I went into my house and made tea, played some piano.-
DAY TWO - Next day, I avoided dealing with the problem for most of the morning and when it was time and just inescapable, I went in. The air conditioner was still blowing hard. The thermostat read 58%. Oh Lord I thought. The air stones were bubbling away and everything, and I mean EVERYTHING was under about a quarter inch of snow. DE that is, L.A. Grower snow. Lord, even my PH meters, my PPM meters with 7 solution all thick in cake batter-now. Boy oh boy, I realized that I had actually lost it the day before. But WAIT. I lost all thoughts of yesterday because suddenly the things I saw in that moment grossed me out. I screamed. Any hairy chested dude would too. What the dust had done, to my cluelessness of the day before was this... the dust had settled upon some grotesque webs unseen before without the defining by the settled dust upon each strand and lo and behold there they were, SPIDERWEBS on a few of the Teenagers! I couldn't take it and walked out, locked it up behind me thinking, eggs hatch tomorrow or the day after anyway. I must have a plan. Must make plan. I went in my house, made some coffee, played some piano. Plants were dying while I tried to play jazz piano. I'm not very good but I have fun playing, so who cares. Noone. I live alone on my farm. The Armenians maybe but who cares, I'm sure they've all decided I'm a nut, always doing something because, "..You have husband? oh. No husband? Oh. You busy not lonely right? Uh-huh..." They are so honest which is super fresh to me, being born and raised in Lala.
I needed to water the mothers but I had spider mites and I couldn't deal yet. It was all too much for a girl, sorry my grow sisters but we are weak when forced to be strong. And fuck bugs. FUCK BUGS. All my beautiful plants covered in DE. It looked like Chernobyl. They micro demons needed time to dehydrate and die, I didn't need to be there. I savored the thought of them all fucked up with slashed up sucker fangs, Fuck them.
Okay, y'all need more background. When my father died in 2007, I flew to the Islands to bury him, the Patriarch of a huge family and me, being 1st Clan and infamous (another story altogether, I'll spare you) was there, a dutiful daughter, an American that the beggar children saw coming from a mile away and motioned sadly with their hands to their mouths that they were starving. See, during the funeral we walked to the Church, a custom. I doled out all my money to these beautiful starving native children. When I had nothing left to give, the procession made a turn into the busier part of the city and there they were, all the starving children of the impoverished that I made no hesitation to give my last travel centavo to, all of them standing on the corner laughing and horsing around with Slurpees and Butterfingers, shooting each other with silly string.
After the funeral and all the weird parties that were customary were finished, the Family took me and my siblings all over the Philippine Islands on the South China Sea side so my brother and I would shut up with our "Where are the waves? We wanna surf! Take us to the beach!!" Stupid, since the beach was everywhere. ANYWAY- -On the way back to the Province of my father, my Uncles asked, "Who needs the toilet?" I did. I was the only one that got out of the van in a little village called Dagupan. Fuck me. We got the news a few days later before my sister and I boarded the plane for LAX, news that Dagupan was going through a mass scabies infestation. Aye. Scabies is the term for the mites that like human blood. Mites. I was the only one that got out of the van. Okay, so you dig? Now you understand my phobia. At home in L.A. is when they showed their presence beneath my skin. You see, mites that prefer humans "burrow" to feast. To lay their eggs. To shit. Etc. When I went to the doctor he told me I had Norwegian Scabies. The name doesn't signify from where they come from but it signifies that I had THOUSANDS of mites beneath my skin. I kept myself in quarantine for 2 months. I went cray-cray. Who wouldn't? It was the worst, most horrific experience of all my lifetimes combined. But just to put icing on the mites little cake was that if I got stoned, I would become violently itchy! I needed a straight jacket. I went to so many asshole doctors controlled by Big Pharma before I found a real doctor, I mean a man that studied medecine because of the passion to heal he was born with and recognized. Sulfur mixed with vaseline applied at bedtime. In the morning. shwer and all the mites wash off and go down the drain. The sulphur caused them to become disoriented. they lose sense of direction and burrow the opposite way: UP and OUT. They become trapped in the vaseline. You wash the fuckers off and clean up the aftermath on sheets, clothing etc.-
will comlete later. this is a draft only
