...speaking of formula film plots and characters, I find this hilarious:
Weekend Wrap: I went to a party on Saturday night, and someone was handing our magic mushrooms. I took two. Half an hour later I was dancing to Lady GaGa. Later on I was positive that as my blood surged through my veins, it made electronic noises that only I could hear. As I walked home down a steep hill, I couldn't work out why people don't fall down hills more often (I forgot that ankles can bend, thus straightening us). The sudden realisation that gravity should be propelling me head first down the hill made me gingerly side-step down the hill. It was 3.30am.
You know how everyone thinks the Native American and their peyote made them wise and spiritual and shit? Wrong. It made them trip balls and think rubbish, just like anyone else on a hallucinatory drug trip.
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Blood does make noise, Pers.
Has Laurie Anderson has taught you nothing?
I can't imagine drugs of any sort making you particularly wise, but I guess they could make you as "spiritual" as anything else. Whatever that means.
Relax Pers, gravity like evolution is just a theory. I prefer the "Intelligent Decline" model.
If by "spiritual" you mean "full of shit" Alex, I'm inclined to agree.
Yes, Ramon. That was rather what I was angling at.
"I'm having by energies balanced by a full of shit healer."
I think that works real well, Ramon
I remember hearing tyres sucking the road and being like Alice in Wonderland at the sink, washing dishes, this one time, at band camp.
Tweren't mushrooms though. Twere cactus.
I can't believe no one has commented on the fact that Pers was dancing to Lady Gaga! Am I the only person who finds this hilarious?
Cactus Melba? My God you people have good lives.
I believe that was Suzanne Vega.
I might if I knew what Lady Gaga's music sounded like, Giggles. If it's anything like her fashion, I find it quite appropriate for him to be dancing to it while off his face! She's clearly off hers when she gets dressed in the morning.
Cactus Melba? My God you people have good lives.
I'm not so sure. I can remember growing and consuming a fair bit of mescaline, back in the days when I thought that kitchen based chemistry was a nifty way to make an easy buck. Personally, it's not something I'd really want to go back and revisit.
Also, I had no clue who Lady Gaga was until the day that Puss described being visually assaulted by her genitals. I still don't think I've heard her sing.
That sounds like very sophisticated kitchen science, Alex. My knowledge of kitchen-based science extends to understanding that the toasting process is irreversible.
Toast is no cactus, but.
Had, Kettle, had.
And there was no toasting involved. It was chopped up, boiled, strained and drunk.
Tricocereus pachanoi.
1985.
And I did find the idea of Perseus dancing to Lady Gaga funny.
Thank goodness for Melba!
Puss, with a bit of luck, next time I inflict some commercial radio on you, they will play one of her songs.
I'm sure you'll forgive me, eventually...
A big glass of San Pedro, Melba. How did you find the taste? Did you manage to keep it all down?
Kettle, I also made a respectable vodka, back in the day. In hindsight, I think I would have been better off if I'd spent the time learning how to prepare actual food.
Taste was awful Alex. We held our noses and chased it with grapefruit juice (barely helped) but yes, kept it all down. Come on, I used to drink claret in the old days. I can probably drink anything.
Suzanne Vega, eh MCL.
I knew it was someone vaguely annoying.
Giggles: What happened was, I had been dancing for abour ten minutes, and I turned to a bloke also dancing and said, "What's this rubbish we're dancing to?" and he goes, "I dunno!" and so we asked the DJ and he explained it was Lady Ga Ga.
True to say, I still don't know a Lady Ga Ga song - I certainly don't recall how the soung I danced to went - but can say that when on mushrooms, I'm likely to dance to anything. Lady GaGa, Hall & Oates, a washing machine.
Heh. A likely story.
Although I can't really talk - once upon a time, whilst under the influence of the best acid I ever had* I found myself dancing to "Mmm Bop" which is, I suspect, even worse.
Drugs really do have a lot to answer for, sometimes...
*also the only acid I ever had that didn't send me all OCD and/or make me try to claw all my skin off.
I don't think you can compare a tribal hallucinogen ritual with your gooey-eyed head-trip, Perseus.
The former is conducted to gain some sort of insight into one's self and/or the world, and the participants are supported by a cultural context where the drug is considered a holy sacrament with the power to deliver that insight, combined with a prerequisite of having to prove oneself mentally and physically disciplined enough to partake of the drug.
You, on the other hand, take yours with the express purpose of tripping balls and thinking rubbish, and you well supported in that goal by a lazy, self-absorbed mind easily fascinated by the mental flotsam floating betwixt your ears.
Okay. I'm going to put my hand up and say:
Is Boogeyman for real?
Boogeyman. Are you for real?
Are you really so pompous or are you taking the piss? It's hard to know in writing.
Oh I like to mix it up with a bit of both, Melba.
Has Perseus outsourced his reactive biting to you now?
"...some sort of insight into one's self and/or the world, and the participants are supported by a cultural context where the drug is considered a holy sacrament with the power to deliver that insight, combined with a prerequisite of having to prove oneself mentally and physically disciplined enough to partake of the drug."
Oh come on Boogeyman, they were taking drugs and tripping balls. "Cultural context' my arse. They were stone-age junkies.
Sure they were, Perseus.
I take it then you've only taken drugs in the context of parties or to kill some time?
What a waste of a good hallucinogen.
And I did find the idea of Perseus dancing to Lady Gaga funny.
Me too. I imagined a lot of finger pointing and hip thrusting and leg shaking, with the odd head toss chucked in for good measure.
A bit like what I saw on an old episode of Top of the Pops the other week.
I kind of have to agree with Melba here, Boogeyman. Are you seriously suggesting that if someone takes hallucinogenic drugs with a sufficient level of discipline and cultural context, then there is legitimate knowledge and wisdom to be gained? I mean, I can see that drug use is a major part of social bonding in many cultures and that maybe it could promote thought that was a little more creative or imaginative than usual, but as far as I can see, any legitimate knowledge or wisdom would have to be a product of the learning and experience that provided that discipline and cultural context in the first place.
I certainly wouldn't have picked you as one of those people who romanticise ancient, "primitive" customs to the point of regarding them as somehow mystical or other-worldly.
No, I'm not romanticising primitive cultures, Alex.
Just suggesting that drugs, particularly hallucinogens, fuel mental processes that often lay dormant, thus giving rise to interesting insights, provided you set your mind to that.
Example: You could use speed to solve some complex maths problem that's eluding you - but that doesn't mean speed inherently makes maths geniuses out of people. In fact, most people who take it would just go and dance to some doof doof music and think for 6 hours, "Doof, doof, doof, why is my mouth so dry, doof, doof, doof..."
But suggesting that the only value of hallucinogens is to see some pretty colours and think some "trippy shit, man" is about as valuable as suggesting that hypnosis is only useful to stage magicians wanting to make people cluck like a chicken.
I'm not getting in to the drugs debate (because I have no experience whatsoever in that area), but ooh! ooh! I've been hypnotised! It worked, too.
No Boogeyman, I wasn't biting, it was a sincere question.
Because I've always thought you just try to wind Perseus up, and mostly succeed, but for some reason I read that particular comment of yours as being for real.
Some of the intent behind it was genuine, Melba, just not the way it was expressed.
I think I see the point you're making, Boogey, but there's still much that doesn't quite ring true for me. You've said that hallucinogens are particularly suited to fuelling mental processes that lay dormant, yet the example you gave was of the use of a stimulant. As I can't imagine too many pre-colonial native Americans sitting down to ponder the theories of quantum mechanics*, nor can I figure out the manner in which a dose of mescaline might help to improve one's knowledge and skill as a hunter, cook or craftsman; I can only imagine that the biggest benefit is from a social point of view - that is, experiencing something that reinforces the idea of a genuinely deep interconnectedness between yourself, your land and your clansmen, may encourage you to become a more conscientious and responsible member of your community. That's as far as I can get with the idea, but it isn't quite what you're talking about, is it?
*Might be something I should consider, though.
And Puss, were you hypnotised by a stage magician or as some form of therapy? What was it like?
As a form of therapy, Alex. I was vegan for 10 years, and although I wanted to go back to eating meat occasionally (I wasn't a healthy vegan), every time I tried, I was physically ill.
I got hypnotherapy, and it took about 4 sessions, but it worked. I am slowly regressing back into my vegan habits, though. I should go back and get the hypnotherapy reinforced. I'm about 90% vegetarian, 10% carnivore at the moment.
It was really weird though. You're conscious the whole time, but you don't remember stuff. I can remember initially lying on the table with my arms across my chest (both hands showing), and the therapist putting me under and then asking me to pick a yes and no finger (odd, I know - I didn't speak at all). My index finger on the right hand moved by itself, and then the middle finger on the left chose itself as the no finger. I was shocked at the time, because I knew I hadn't moved them (plus, I would have chosen both index fingers, because I like symmetry).
I recall that I was awake the whole time, that I could hear the questions he was asking me, and that I was surprised by some of the responses I gave. But at the end, he puts in place a mental block that protects you from information you're not meant to know (that your brain had blocked out for a reason), so when I woke up, I thought I had only been under for 10 minutes, but it had been about an hour. And I cannot for the life of me recall the questions he asked or the answers I gave.
Very strange. But at least it worked!
Oh, I reckon I worked out what you were talking about, Boogeyman. The idea of a 'complex problem' has to be scaled to fit the level of the people you're referring too, right? Silly me.
Puss, doesn't it bother you knowing that there's stuff that you know but don't know it? And that somebody else does?
Well, Alex, it's more to the point that you don't have to live in a high-tech society like ours to contemplate meaning and purpose in life, just imagination. The drugs help stimulate that imagination.
I wasn't even thinking as far as meaning and purpose. But I imagine that it would take a great deal of imagination for a person without modern scientific learning to even attempt to understand and explain the intricate systems evident in the natural world. Even though it's not the best example when discussing the ideas of early tribal peoples, I can only imagine what it must have been like for those astronomers trying to conceptualise a round Earth orbiting a sun for the very first time. Must have been a far-out thing to wrap the mind around.
I assume magic shrooms are still illegal there in Aust.
Come to the British Virgin Islands Pers.. not illegal at all here and they're easily found under the many cow pats laid daily.
One local makes a punch out of the magic mushrooms found growing underneath his cow's poos... funny to watch lawyers and rastas all tripping together.
Puss, doesn't it bother you knowing that there's stuff that you know but don't know it? And that somebody else does?
It did bother me to start with, after I first got it done (about 5-6 years ago), and I recall trying to force myself to remember the "conversation." But I don't really think about it all that much anymore. If I was meant to remember, I would.
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