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 It’s 4 pm. I just woke up from a nap on the couch. My neck is killing me, and my joints aren’t too happy either. I keep yawning, and I’m beyond grumpy. Between the grogginess, discomfort, and general feeling that something’s wrong, it’s time to smoke.

 But the experiment needs a control, so I put on my headphones and connect them to my phone before unfurling from beneath my blanket. To my surprise, I charged both my phone and headphones last night – they’re powered up and ready for action.

 An immediate smile crosses my face, even though the first song, Disease, has been out for a while at this point. I travel back in time to 2008’s The Fame, except now I’m a gay adult and not a gay kid.

 Oh wow. Garden of Eden is playing. Harmonies, heavy synth, late 2000s/early 2010s “c’mon”s in the background. I’m careful about not dabbing too much because it’s easy for me to skip the Buzzed step of the ladder accidentally.

 Perfect Celebrity is an interesting song to listen to while staying in the Buzzed territory. I feel a bit more connected to the music in this state, and I see why some people like to stay at this level of intoxication.

 Vanish Into You starts and as much as I would love to relish in the subtle but enjoyable Buzzed state, the song lulls me to start thinking about the dab rig again. As I write this, I smile widely at the simple and comforting drum beat that appears in so many pop songs (and I mean that in a good way).

 I’m really nodding with the music for the first time, like not just because it’s good, but because I’m High. I look outside my window and see all the cars and pedestrians. My partner put on a cute jacket because I opened the window a few minutes ago, and I keep looking up and smiling at them.

 Right, my timing. LoveDrug is song 8 out of 14, and I’m on step 3 out of 7 of my ladder. Nearly perfect if you turn them into ratios (it took me a while to think of that word.) I hope this all makes sense later.

 Okay, now I’m putting my laptop down for real and getting Stoned. Finally. And this song is staying on repeat- I’m not ready to move on from it yet. At this point, I’ve turned the volume up at least four times even though I try to be careful about protecting my hearing. This is inner child healing and it gets a pass.

 It takes a bit of time to get stoned, mostly because I’m being careful to pause and evaluate how I’m feeling before taking more dabs. It’s a really important skill for cannabis users- and all drug users- to have. This scale is part of what helps me keep track of how I’m feeling.

 How Bad Do U Want Me is on its last chorus by the time I can power through my new Stoned state and finish this sentence. Anyway, it was really good and makes me excited for the youngins to experience Gaga at her prime. The song deserves more attention than I’m giving it. There’s a lot to be said about subtle sexual messaging in music, specifically the bad girl trope. I think this song is probably going to be one of the standouts of the album.

 Don’t Call Tonight is playing now, and I’m thinking about how empowering it feels to listen to. I feel like Gaga is singing at all my exes for me. (I’m pausing the music so I can flesh out this thought.)

 The power behind her voice when she sings the lyric “Don’t call tonight!” is so palpable. It’s not a woe-is-me breakup song, although those are much needed. She’s like, you messed up, you missed your chance, leave me alone because I have better things to do. Don’t call tonight!

 The next song is Shadow Of A Man, and I’m interested in seeing how it fits into the theme of the last two songs, specifically. Oh, this is a bop. “I can’t get enough.” OH, the chorus. Wow. This is going on repeat, and I’m getting Stoney Balogne. I hope I can better express how exciting this song is once I’m vibing even harder.

 Also, my pain went away a while ago. It’s almost like weed is both medicine and a drug. Really cool stuff. And I noticed that the last song features Bruno Mars. I have a visceral bodily reaction of doubt, but I trust Gaga.

 I switch from live resin to rosin this time when I load my dab rig, because now that we’re getting higher up the scale it’s a better bang for your buck. Also because, why not? I know I’ve reached Stoney Balogne pretty easily, because I started thinking to myself, “Wait, which level am I trying to reach right now?” and I feel like that’s indication enough.

 I spent a lot of time, Stoned listening to Shadow of a Man on repeat while reading the lyrics, and I’ve decided that Gaga may have accidentally written a transmasc anthem. At least as a trans man, the song speaks to me in that way. I mean, pretty much every verse has lyrics I could point to, but for ease, I’ll just direct you to the chorus:

 This is NOT to imply that trans men are the “shadow of a man”. In my interpretation, this song can be about a man realizing he’s trans and deciding he’s ready to start living as himself (“I’m about to be there, I’m about to be there/ Watch me, I swear.”)

 Coming into manhood can be incredibly complicated and confusing. We spend our whole lives receiving messages about gender, and in the process of stepping into yourself you have to learn how you personally experience…this is hard to explain while Stoney Balogne. I have to pause the music to focus.

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 We spend our whole lives getting messages about what it means to be a man, so then when you’re first out it’s really easy to feel like you’re “in the shadow of a man” because you’re figuring out how the heck to be a man and how to fit in with those around you in this new way. Eventually, you realize it doesn’t matter and there’s no right way to be a man, and the shadow feeling goes away over time.

 I know that Gaga wrote the song as a commentary on power dynamics between genders, specifically how women are capable of doing amazing things regardless of the men who put them in the shadows. I think it’s beautiful that the wording unintentionally also lends itself to the transmasc experience, especially because Gaga has had the trans community’s back since day 1. (To be transparent, I added this paragraph after I sobered up a bit because I wanted to do the topic better justice.)

 Moving on. The Beast is such a vibe. While still intense lyrically and emotionally, it’s slower and feels like a moment to both rest and process the album thus far. Process the fact that Gaga gave us this album nearly 20 years after The Fame. She knew that we all really needed the comfort that we felt in her music all that time ago- perhaps because she needed it too.

 Now I’m Baked Ziti and oh my gosh it rocks. My friend told me today about how when he interned at Electric Lady the musicians smoked a LOT of pot. He would have to get it for them sometimes even. These are fun facts for sure, and good for an icebreaker.

 Most dynamic song of the album so far, I’m going to stop typing and just listen to it on its own now so I can really feel everything I was writing about. I imagine my heart will be broken.

 Describing the delicacy of a relationship through the metaphor of a blade of grass tied around her finger, the hurt that she held alone for so long being held together with the help of another so gently and lovingly. We’re all very lucky that she shared this song with us.

 When I’m getting Baked Ziti Al Dente (woah these keys are so bouncy!) I’m always like, “I’m already so high, how will I know when it’s time?” But the beautiful thing about the scale is that it’s personal, and with practice, you get to know where your sweet spots are. So I kinda just like, know when I reach it.

 I can’t believe we’re here, at the last song, and I’m Baked Ziti Al Dente. What is my job?? I’m so lucky to get to do this. I hope it ends up telling a story, I don’t know what kind of story, but I hope there’s some kind of arc in this article that shows a journey of me at these levels and how my brain works as I work my way up. It’s going to be kind of funny, I think, at the very least, but I don’t want it to just be silly. I just hope my vision ends up panning out.

 Die With A Smile, it’s indescribably hopeful. It’s a completely different feel from the rest of the album. Kinda beachy and rocky – a bursting power ballad – but the harmonies evoke so much hope and joy and the song is just bursting with love. “If the world was ending, I’d wanna be next to you.”

 Behind all of these fun dance songs, there is a gaping honesty in the lyrics. And that honesty includes a lot of darkness, a lot of push and pull, a lot of hurt. Even if it’s just tucked into one line of a song. There were songs about cheating, dancing, doing drugs, having sex, and being a celebrity, all with this fascination and draw towards the absolute deepest bits of truth to the human experience.

 Gaga put together this album that finds so much joy and thrill in the mysterious, I mean, think about The Fame, and the levels of darkness that she had to publicly do stunts of (meat dress!) because this is where she lives. She takes the darkness and really feels it and transforms it into something we can enjoy and find solace in. Her artistry comes from her ability to make ugly things beautiful.

 When it comes to any hot-button issue like cannabis legalization, there are always two sides, often without much middle ground. For those looking through a pro-legalization lens, efforts to continue federal prohibition and bar states from legalizing should be a thing of the past.

 Whereas, for proponents of anti-legalization, prohibition is a no-brainer. To fully understand this debate, we must examine the other side and explore the anti-legalization agenda. Let’s assess its potential impact both federally and statewide, and determine if a middle ground exists.

 In 1937, Congress enacted the Marijuana Tax Act after repealing federal alcohol prohibition in 1933. As a reaction to the many Mexican immigrants who brought cannabis with them across the border from Mexico in the early 1900s, anti-cannabis propaganda was widespread regarding these immigrants and other minorities, like African Americans. They prominently targeted these groups, claiming they were susceptible to ‘deviant behaviors’ caused by the “devil weed”.

 The Nixon administration took the racially-charged propaganda behind cannabis prohibition even further by unofficially beginning the “War on Drugs” in 1971. Cannabis was classified as a Schedule I drug along with heroin and meth in the Controlled Substances Act. This policy ensured significant penalties and incarceration for possession, cultivation, and trafficking for anyone found guilty in the U.S. So began decades of millions of arrests, particularly of African Americans, and an inability for researchers to study and unlock cannabis’s full medicinal value due to its status as federally illegal.

 Interestingly enough, the New York Times released an article in September of 2024, whereby a 1973 audio recording was unearthed of Nixon declaring he knew cannabis “is not particularly dangerous”, despite affecting millions of lives and families due to his policies ever since. Harper’s magazine also released an article in 2016, with clips from an interview with a top Nixon advisor who made a similar admission. Watergate co-conspirator, John Erlichmann, admitted on tape that the administration used the War On Drugs as a means to counter the voices of the anti-war hippies, as well as pro-Civil Rights efforts by African-Americans, to “disrupt those communities”.