Yeah, Four Twen-...Wait, What Were We Talking About?

(Portrait of the artist as a stoned man)

Well folks, April 20 is upon us, and you know what that means. "What, Hitler's birthday?" "Anniversay of Columbine?"

Um, yes and no. 4/20 is the actually the unofficial day where we all come together and bond through the simple act of smoking us some weeeeeeeeed, bro. It would have been nice to have had the day off at work, seeing as it's pretty much the national holiday of one of our magazines, but anyways...

How many of you know the origin behind this ubiquitous term for the pot smoking culture? My guess is no. That's okay, I had to look it up, too. Apparently, all this 420 culture was started around 1970 by some miscreants in San Rafael, CA (surprised?), who would meet at 4:20 after school to get together and burn one down. While I was hesitant to accept this, plenty of sites point to this as the true origin, not other myths like its the CA police code for smoking marijuana (420 is the code for obstructing entry onto public land) or that there's 420 active chemicals in marijuana (actually 315 sweet, sweet chemicals). And come on, Wikipedia never told a lie, right? Riiiiiiiight.

So there you go, you cute little stoners, thought I'd pass you a packed bowl of knowledge and information. Just don't forget to pass it on the left hand side.