headline of the day
ROSEANNE BARR Files Official Docs To Become President
from the comments
I know a guy from Ohio who worked as a long-haul trucker for a good while after high school. Then he did other things and we wound up working at a library together and after a time he became a big wheel at the MacArthur Foundation.
He claims to have met Patty Hearst when she was on the lam, and he told me that she stole his drugs, but I know he was just spoofing me.
headline of the day, II
Paula Deen confirms that she has type 2 diabetes, unveils partnership with drug company
Funk songs from Vietnam GIs
If you didn’t get a Christmas present from me, it’s because I’m waiting till the New Year to buy you East of Underground: Hell Below. (Thanks to Valerie for the tip.)
In 1971 the US was pulling troops out of Vietnam, and its bases in Germany were full of draftees at a loose end. “You were painting shovels, picking up cigarette butts – it was a lot of busy-work,” remembers former serviceman Lewis Hitt. “There was a longing by everyone, especially the draftees, to get home and go back to what you were doing before.”
This was the crucible in which were formed scores of raucous funk bands made up of servicemen, four of which have just been compiled by Now-Again Records. Adoring crowd noise was crudely dubbed on top of their records, which were then distributed in recruitment centres. These bands were used by the army to present service as varied, even hip. But the songs they cover – the bitter, suspicious likes of Backstabbers and Smiling Faces Sometimes – undermine any potential propagandising.
quote out of context
Break into his house when he’s not home. Put truth serum in all of the liquids in his fridge. Make sure you’re around when he drinks something from his fridge. And, uh, don’t drink from there yourself, or you’ll end up telling him that he’s consumed truth serum and the gig’s up.
Did Dropping Acid Make Steve Jobs More Creative?
Slate Magazine is discussing the question, citing several experiments during the 50′s and 60′s that seem to point to LSD as a catalyst for innovation and creative thinking:
Taken as a whole, the studies suggested that people who are creative to begin with may experience a slight increase in inspiration or insight during and after an acid trip. That’s not true for non-artistic types, although psychologists did find that most participants thought they got more creative on LSD, regardless of what the tests actually showed…
Despite the relative paucity of rigorous scientific data, Steve Jobs—who once suggested that Microsoft products would be better if Bill Gates “had dropped acid once or gone off to an ashram when he was younger“—is far from alone in his belief. Francis Crick reportedly claimed to have envisioned the structure of DNA during an acid trip. John Lennon attributed the Beatles’ album Revolver to the group’s acid use.
Connecting the dots, the author doesn’t seem convinced by the studies, but it’s still a fascinating idea. Jobs was obviously a visionary, predicting technologies years or sometimes decades before they would be fully realized by Apple (this 1996 interview on NPR’s Fresh Air seems to include prediction for both the iPad and Apple TV). That’s either serendipitous prescience or the product of some very constructive acid trips (or more probably, a combination of both). Either way, it reminded me of something Deron once shared (or maybe a book he was reading) that discussed the proposition that human culture evolved through the use of hallucinogens. Humans have had the same DNA for something like 250,000 years, yet only developed complex societies and culture in the last 15,000 or so – Steve Jobs just took it all a massive step further.
In a perverse way, his work for the government only encouraged his criminal behavior and pushed his wayward ambitions into the stratosphere
Only 25 years old, with little more than a high school education, Albert had created the perfect bubble, a hermetically sealed moral universe in which he made the rules and controlled all the variables — and the only code that mattered was the loyalty of his inner circle. He even had an insurance policy, one designed to keep him a step ahead of the federal agents charged with tracking cybercrime: For the past four years, Albert had been working as an informant for the Secret Service, helping federal agents to identify and bust other rogue hackers. His double life as a snitch gave him an inside look at how the feds try to safeguard the nation’s computer data — and reinforced his own sense of superiority. “Psychologically,” his sister later told a judge, “it was feeding an obsession that in the end would become my brother’s downfall.”
I felt like the outcome of the story was less interesting than the details, but if you’re fascinated by psychology, and crime, and the internet it’s still worth a read.
headline of the day, II
Kindergartener brings crack pipe, meth for show-and-tell
tweet of the day, III
He could have set the Guinness World Record for people who wanted to kill him
The story of Edgar Valdez, aka La Barbie, an American citizen who rose to the top of one of Mexico’s prominent drug cartels.
Like many Texans, Barbie grew up right across the border from Mexico, in the city of Laredo. The place feels like something from a Mexican postcard, with cobblestone plazas and picturesque waterfalls – except for the massive, multilane bridge to Mexico that cuts straight through town. Until the drug war, everyone in Laredo saw the two sides of the border as one; many families, after all, had blood ties in both Mexico and the States. As a kid, Barbie loved to visit Nuevo Laredo, a border town bustling with donkeys, food carts, girls in little embroidered dresses, shoeshine boys and the smell of roasting corn. It was like stepping into another world, and all you had to do was cross the bridge.
In high school, Barbie was in the popular crowd, horsing around in the breezeways outside of class and waging egg wars after school. On weekends, he went to keggers on ranches, played elaborate scavenger games and hung out with his steady sweetheart, Virginia Perez, a bubbly, blue-eyed blonde. He grew up in a middle-class development on the outskirts of Laredo, a kind of no man’s land where Burger Kings didn’t begin to sprout up until the Nineties. Even the people of Laredo considered it “Indian territory,” an area rife with dope and illegal immigrants. Barbie’s parents raised him and his five siblings in a tidy, orange-trimmed home with palm trees in the front. “They’re regular Ozzie and Harriets,” says Jose Baeza, a spokesman for the Laredo police department. “They’re business owners, PTA, morning-jog people.”
Here’s a link to the printer friendly version.
(via the browser)
headline of the day
Calif professor wanted for leading gang, drug ring
Let’s buy two big industrial windmills
Bad Lip Reading takes music videos and does a terrible job lip reading the lyrics and a wonderful job writing music. I have enjoyed each of their songs more than the original.
For comparison, the original video
Oscar Mayer. It doesn’t get better than this.
Oscar Mayer Sandwich Combos are one of the five unique varieties of Adult Lunch Combos.
Cindy tipped me to this, and I have been snorting ever since.
the porsche bong
A subsidiary of the company that makes the cars, Porsche Design just produced a bong.
headline of the day, II
Denver Newspaper Hires Professional Pot Critic
headline of the day
Scientists find first superbug strain of gonorrhea
Las Reinas Chulas: “Que Suave Patria”
Please don’t turn aside take a look even if no hablas español (not even dumbass texan spanish).
¡Las Reinas Chulas reglan!
Dozens of plastic foam heads rain onto the stage. Four drug traffickers in fringed jackets and sparkly pink cowboy hats bat them into the audience with toy AK-47s. All the while, the cast croons, “Let them slit our throats, let them pack us up . . . let them not ask any questions, let them not investigate.”
This is cabaret, Mexico style. Las Reinas Chulas, or the Beautiful Queens, parody drug violence in a show the women first produced in 2005 and that still fills nightclubs around Mexico, including a performance in the tourist town of Taxco this weekend.
START TODAY
MAKE NO DELAY
TRUTH will out!
This is Mr Curtis’s shop window in Barrack Street, Waterford, dressed for a competition. (Circa: 1930.)
Courtesy of the National Library of Ireland.
“It’s all part of life’s rich pageant”
A friend of mine (who eventually became a VP at a Major Philanthropic Foundation) began his (adult) working life as a cross-country trucker. He said that although the so-called “boot-heel” of Missouri scared the bejeesus out of the most seasoned truckers, there was this place where you could go at 7:00 AM and get steak and eggs and bourbon AND watch a live sex show.
Actually, he said, that was also part of the scariness.
He also claimed that he met Patty Hearst when she was on the lam. When pressed, he said, “Well, she said her name was Tanya. And she stole my dope.”
facebook status updates, hostage edition
I’m currently in a standoff … kinda ugly, but ready for whatever.
I love u guyz and if I don’t make it out of here alive that I’m in a better place and u were all great friends.
Got a cute `Hostage’ huh
Well i was lettin this girl go but these dumb bastards made an attempt to come in after i told them not to, so i popped off a couple more shots and now were startin all over again it seems…
from the moderated comments
I watched the documentary on the Amish teens who visited Britain and I actually identified with the Amish girl and her thoughts. I was raised in So. Cal in the 60′s and though not from an overtly regligious family, I did not like way most teens acted, going after drugs and sex and dressing provocatively. I guess I was different in that I loved horses and art and was often teased by kids my age not acting like the majority (parties, dating, smoking pot, etc.) I wish more kids were raised to be self-sufficient and not just seek video games and pleasures. These young Amish were a real testimony for God.
headline of the day
Mexican police arrest drug boss “El Brad Pitt”
“I think my heart is more open to all interactions with other people,” one volunteer reported
Researchers at John Hopkins University School of Medicine have been studying the effects of psilocybin, a chemical found in some psychedelic mushrooms, that’s credited with inducing transcendental states. Now, they say, they’ve zeroed in on the perfect dosage level to produce transformative mystical and spiritual experiences that offer long-lasting life-changing benefits, while carrying little risk of negative reactions.
Looks like this may finally be gaining traction.
headline of the day, IV
David Simon Agrees to Make Sixth Season of ‘The Wire’ If U.S. Agrees to End War on Drugs
from the comments
The funny thing is, honest to god, I did think it was a documentary about the Census Bureau. I was 21 and naive and they’d only told me the title. Scott and Mark liked to put me in situations and watch. Like the time they gave me poppers. Like the times they took me dancing at the gay disco. Like the night they got me drunk for the first time in my life and I started re-arranging the paintings on the wall of a restaurant. Stuff like that.
