Well, my doctor says I have a sinus infection. That’s two in a month. Shows you what happens when one works much and sleeps little for several months running. The casualties? social life, creativity, immune system. What sucks is that I’ve gone two or three years without one of these things (i used to get them all the time).

Fortunately, there are lovely modern antibiotics to treat this, and lovely modern pain meds to take care of what feels like a large nail being driven slowly into my face slightly to port of my nose.

And there was much rejoicing (yay.)

Brutha Ray told me yesterday that my recent entries seem kind of on edge.

And he’s right of course. Ray’s always right, except when he disagrees with me. Then, he’s only right half the time.

Yeah, it’s true. I’ve been a little edgy lately. I could give you a catalog of the minor and major stresses in my life, the projects at work that are due to get announced next week at MacWorld, the things at work that provide a daily frustration and leave me thinking about a nice quiet, sane job at the funny farm. I could catalog the minor aches and pains and colds and allergies that come with the holidays. I could talk about wants and dreams and desires versus cold, stony reality.

But fuck all that whinin’. I got no patience with it.

Instead, let’s talk about LSD.

There’s a wonderful interview with Albert Hofmann, the man who invented LSD, in the NY Times.

…It was as he was synthesizing the drug on a Friday afternoon in April 1943 that he first experienced the altered state of consciousness for which it became famous. “Immediately, I recognized it as the same experience I had had as a child,” he said. “I didn’t know what caused it, but I knew that it was important.”

When he returned to his lab the next Monday, he tried to identify the source of his experience, believing first that it had come from the fumes of a chloroform-like solvent he had been using. Inhaling the fumes produced no effect, though, and he realized he must have somehow ingested a trace of LSD. “LSD spoke to me,” Mr. Hofmann said with an amused, animated smile. “He came to me and said, ‘You must find me.’ He told me, ‘Don’t give me to the pharmacologist, he won’t find anything.’ “

It’s a wonderful interview with the sort of person who reminds me of the scientists my father used to talk about. The sort of people who were both scientists and philosophers. Deep thinkers, people who seem to look at the world and just see more than the rest of us do. I pretend to be one of these people, but I’d have to be a scientist to pull it off.

I’m too young to have been in the acid culture of the sixties. I can imagine my father having been there though, if he’d been in the right circles. He never dropped acid, but he was a huge pothead (my first experiences with pot were stealing from his stash and taking it to school). He would have loved the heightened perceptual experience.

Oddly, even though I started smoking pot way too young, I managed to not encounter acid at all as a teenager. I wanted it, would have tried it. When I was fourteen or fifteen, I would have tried anything, any drug I could have laid hand on, any sexual experience with anyone of any age. I was already drinking, though not much (A stolen beer here or there, a sip of a drink). But I was already seeking experience and sensation. I wanted it all, now.

It wasn’t until I was around nineteen that I stumbled, almost literally, onto LSD.

Read more ““LSD spoke to me,” Mr. Hofmann said”

      I love coffee, I love tea, 
      I love the Java Jive and it loves me 
      Coffee and tea and the java and me, 
      A cup, a cup, a cup, a cup, a cup! 
      — Ben Oakland and Milton Drake, Java Jive

Hi I’m Karl Elvis, and I’m a Java Junkie.

It’s true.

I love coffee. The smell. The taste. That buzz from the first sip of the morning. It’ll never feel that good again the rest of the day.

I wake up craving it. The thought makes me salivate.

I’m talking coffee; black and hot, with sugar and no other flavor. No nuts no vanilla. No milk. No syrups, no cinnamon, no chocolate. Just coffee. Strong and black, black black.

I make espresso. I make french press so heavy it’s hard to lift. My friend Amie Sue describes it as chewy.

I don’t fuck around with coffee. If it’s not strong, if it doesn’t roar coffee at you, I don’t want it.

When I go to a coffee bar, I usually drink espresso if they’re really good at it, or a multi-shot short (or tall at that place but we’ll make that a tirade for later). No lattes, no fuss. Once in a while a macchiato if they do it right, espresso with a little dab of foam.

The modern trend of kiddee-coffee that tastes like soda pop disgusts me.

But I am a junkie.

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Every once in a while I remember why I like drugs.

I’ve been struggling to get back on California time for a week now since getting back from Fiji. My body wants to still be there.

My head sort of does too.

Actually my head wants to be someplace else tropical. I mean, Fiji was great, and I’ll go back one day; but I get restless with too many days in one place.

Read more “Down with Downers”