How to Get a Pot Card: The Music Video

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Just in time for 4/20, here’s a sassy number from the comic troubadours Garfunkel and Oates. It’s as if Snoop Dogg and Feist had a lovechild (or two):

Given my professional interest in pot cards, I decided to see what Garfunkel (a.k.a Riki Lindhomeand Oates (a.ka. Kate Micucci) had to say about the issue:

Mother Jones: How did you get the idea for this?

Garfunkel: We live in California and medical marijuana is pretty easily obtained here. There’s more pot stores than Starbucks. And yet it’s still technically illegal. So it’s kind of hypocritical.

MJ: What kind of research did you do on pot card procurement?

Garfunkel: We just Googled it and found the official list [of ailments treatable by pot]. It’s really, really long.

MJ: According a leading chain of California pot docs, there are 198 different maladies that qualify.

Garfunkel: It’s pretty much any part of your body followed by the word “pain.” Elbow pain, spleen pain, face pain, whatever.

MJ: It’s striking how many seemingly contradictory illnesses qualify, such as anorexia and bulimia.

Garfunkel: My neighbor said you can quit smoking by it.

MJ: Are you a California pot card holder?

Oates: I am.

MJ: If it’s not too personal, what’s your medical need for marijuana?

Oates: Anxiety and insomnia.

MJ: Mine is writer’s cramp.

Oates: Big problem!

MJ: How long have you had your pot card?

Oates: I’ve had it since last Wednesday (laughs). I actually felt the need for it, which is why I got it. I didn’t feel like I needed it before then. I wasn’t a frequent smoker. But given recent events it felt necessary. Medically. Honestly. So.

MJ: I hear that releasing a potentially viral video about pot cards can be stressful.

Oates: Exactly! 

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WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We can’t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

The upshot: Being able to rally $253,000 in donations over these next few weeks is vitally important simply because it is the number that keeps us right on track, helping make sure we don't end up with a bigger gap than can be filled again, helping us avoid any significant (and knowable) cash-flow crunches for now. We used to be more nonchalant about coming up short this time of year, thinking we can make it by the time June rolls around. Not anymore.

Because the in-depth journalism on underreported beats and unique perspectives on the daily news you turn to Mother Jones for is only possible because readers fund us. Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism we exist to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we need readers to show up for us big time—again.

Getting just 10 percent of the people who care enough about our work to be reading this blurb to part with a few bucks would be utterly transformative for us, and that's very much what we need to keep charging hard in this financially uncertain, high-stakes year.

If you can right now, please support the journalism you get from Mother Jones with a donation at whatever amount works for you. And please do it now, before you move on to whatever you're about to do next and think maybe you'll get to it later, because every gift matters and we really need to see a strong response if we're going to raise the $253,000 we need in less than three weeks.

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