Now I remember why I don't do mescaline very often. Takes forever to prepare and tastes like an incontinent hobo's anus—plus this is the first time I have ever fully power chucked or helicopter projectile vomited, covering R.'s toilet head-to-toe in red wine and the retch and gag of San Pedro cactus.

Still, the trip was pretty mint.

Like the brave & noble knights of bygone chivalric times, our heroes battle courageously against tyranny and oppression by boiling San Pedro cactus in a big fuck-off cooking pot

Photo by P.

Not having written for a while (or indeed having anything worthwhile to say really) I thought I'd make one of those trashy substandard what-am-I-up-to entries just like every other boring motherfucker out there. Been working very very hard, and also paradoxically slacking off as much as humanly possible. Ostensibly I am working right now. See how this works?

Loving stencilling, I can't draw at all and this is the first time I've ever been able to express myself visually. Not that I'm super good or anything, but it's fun and makes me think that even though not everyone can be the next Leonardo Van Gough or whatever... whatever! so what! art really is for everybody, and everybody should get the chance and seize the moment and take a can of spraypaint to the nearest wall or billboard.

The devil quotes scripture, and nowhere is this more true than with the Christian right. I've been wondering why Christians come across as such absolute cunts, why it is that the clubs or cudgels of self-righteous legalism should be such a constant trump card over the more compassionate suit of hearts.

I could take the time to tear apart the ridiculous BERL drug harm study commissioned by the NZ police, but all you need to know is that, as Russell Brown astutely pointed out, the study includes the cost of prohibition as part of social harm. This means that for every dollar spent on more enforcement the drug harm index also rises by exactly one dollar, while at the same time enabling the police to count a proportion of this increased cost as a “saving” from each successful drug seizure. Sounds pretty scientific. Yeah, it's total bullshit, but you can bet your sweet cherry ass that they'll be quoting all kinds of comforting (or frightening) statistics from this “research” as the occasion demands.

The devil quotes scripture, at length and in depth, and the unfortunate thing is that people often listen.

Caught up with Mel & Sass & Caroline & Brian and got ridiculously drunk, good to catch up—good times, crazy days, one for the photo album.

We! We are wild, and absolutely anything possibly conceivable could happen, and does, and frequently. We are scavengers, feral dogs, eaters of carrion and left over table-scraps. We, you, me; them and yours and each of us, as overgrown and untamed as the bottom of the ocean. Say: ever have one of those days where you feel like a complete failure? Yeah. Me neither. Intelligence being a verb not a noun, a continual flowing action rather than just a static state; and inspiration! inspiration moves quick, runs fast, is swiftly fleet of foot and must be chased.

Tonight I have downed so many prescription drugs, I reckon I could almost start my own pharmacy with the chemicals I've ingested. A little more ritalin, just a touch, a pinch, a tender punch of zoplicon, and why not? For nearly every illegal drug there is, the American money machine is perfectly willing to (and indeed actually does) provide a legally available pharmaceutical equivalent. All you need is the illegible squiggle of some random doctors signature, or else to have previously arranged the proxy purchase for you by someone who has a legitimate scrip.

Are there any limits to how far this could go? I guess not. These people have serious psychological conditions that require serious psychiatric treatment, but at the end of the day they still need to eat. The black market for off-label illegal sale prescription chemicals is far larger than even the scariest narco-ambien nightmares of the most radical of Washington think-tanks

Word on the street is apparently zoplicon (in combination with certain other compounds) can lead to temporary delusion, and even (in some cases) actual delirium, a total psychotic break with reality. No matter. Not to worry. We were always breaking up anyway, arguing over this, fighting over that. I'm not sure on balance the relationship is worth the cost.

Down the fucking hatch. I'm already bored with the world. I read a list of a billion and one ways to blow your brainos out on some website. Son youknow reality and me divrced some time ago, and now it's time to fork over your m,others alimony. Here, take everything. I never wanted the 95 inge intelevisio.n You can decice imong yourseles who wants I wan .boox.

At this point I guess I must have passed out. I was attempting to counter the sedative and hypnotic affects of the valium, alcohol and zoplicon by way of snorting regular lines of ritalin so that I could stay awake and keep writing. It seemed the sensible thing to do at the time, but the zoplicon was just totally over powering. knocked me on my ass in the space of half an hour. I had read somewhere that by forcing yourself to stay awake on sleeping pills it was possible to enter a kind of waking dream or nightmare, a way to take a bathosphere down far below safe diving distance and deep into the murky grotesque depths of the subconscious. The polydrug combination was an extremely bad idea. Especially the Marilyn Monroe style cocktail of depressants and alcohol. Slap on the wrist Caleb. I am sometimes indifferent to my own safety. In fact the sheer willful stupidity of the deal was, in a twisted kind of way, terribly exciting.

Still have writers block however.

It is my belief that we are all responsible, to a greater or lesser degree, for bringing into existence the kind of world we would want to live in. Indeed we generally do so completely naturally, almost subconsciously, you could call it the natural project of our lives. Our actions tend to flow from the deep artesian well of our “core values”, those beliefs that hold us closest. We do not cradle these thoughts and feelings to our chest like a little babies, but rather, they are the ones that nurse and nurture us.

Now don't get me wrong, I'm not one of those “power of positive thinking” types. I don't think your necessarily responsible or the bad things that happen to you, and all the wishing in the world won't help win the national lottery. I'm simply saying, in the long run people tend to act in a way consistent with who they are. The kind encourage compassion, and the ruthless, ruthlessness.

Since I was much younger I realised the enormous power of the social construction of reality. A brick through a window is still, of course, a brick through a window, but the interpretation of the swiftly flying brick, the meaning of the shattered glass is still very much socially constructed, an action to be lauded, or criticised, depending on the capacious warps and seams of the social fabric. But the kind of things that could be done with technology, the possibilities inherent in producing tools that amplified my thoughts and deeds by a factor of ten, a hundred, one thousand! that was pure magic. Driven by one tenth desire to change the world and nine tenths narcissism, these projects never seemed to go entirely as planned, With so many different individuals acting with each other and with the code, there were always unintended consequences. Which was also something I loved. My projects had taken on a life apart from me, I had given birth through the crevice of my frontal cortex and now something new crawled or walked or slithered across the face of the earth.

This long preamble brings me to my latest project, which was not entirely a success, but on the other hand not a total and unmitigated failure. It should be obvious by now that I am not just indifferent, or merely even for the legalisation of—I am actively pro-drugs. When I was a kid, before I started using anything I envisioned drugs as nothing less than the fiery blood of Satan himself and “druggies” as the half-whispered monsters who raped and killed innocent law-abiding citizens at slightest whim to get their fix. None of which is remotely true, obviously, but watching the news or reading the paper wouldn't lead you to think so. It's kind of fascinating to watch the media wave around the enormous cardboard cut-out of the cloven hoofed folk devil of drug use around, in the right light you can see the wires. Fascinating, but also kind of disgusting. They were outright out-and-out lying! It was all lies and bullshit but people still seemed to gobble it up by the spoonful. What was needed was a kind of consciousness raising exercise, but you can't just tell people the truth, you have to show them. There is the kind of truth you appreciate intellectually, and then another, much richer, more real emotional truth, the truth of personal revelation. There's no running or rationalising away from a truth that resonates inside you like the ringing of a tuning fork.

After some thought E seemed like the most appropriate choice. Minimal side effects, safer than aspirin and a guaranteed good time. If your gonna give drug n00bs a taste of something harder than pot it may as well be E. I wanted to become a proselyte for recreational chemistry, an e-vangelist that could plug you in direct to all the angels and trumpets of the serotonin celestial chorus. Even if only one person took E and found it was actually good, not bad, not all the crap and foulness they were reverse-marketing it as, well, that could change a lot of attitudes down the road.

And in the end, of the five people I had initially arranged, only one person did (glad you had a good time dude!), I blame this on my own lack of organisation and on over extrapolating from my own specific feelings towards drugs (yes please!) to the more general case. Also, as a friend pointed out, I could be thought of as a “pusher”, evil old Caleb getting the kids hooked on these vile chemicals so he can push ever outwards the boundaries of his burgeoning drug empire. To help clear any confusion I don't deal and I don't take a cut when I hook people up, I do this from love. I really feel like drugs have enriched my life in ways too numerous to count. They've made me a lot more liberal in my world-view, certainly a lot more eccentric yes, but I'm not sure that's a bad thing. The positives greatly outweigh the negatives, at least in my case. A lot of what I consider my best ideas have come out of having the occasional late night wrestle with psychedelics. Clearly I still have a lot to work on, re being a better person, but anyone who thinks taking drugs is the easy route over the mountain is kidding themselves. They will make you confront creatures that had up until then only slumbered fitfully in the swamps and jungles of your head, and sleeping beasts you had always thought best left undisturbed will rise and rear and howl at you.

Despite the small scale of my tiny victory—or failure, I will still take the lessons learned and apply them, to the next time. Because there will be a next time. Because this is the future, and I hope to help bring it about.

Eight tabs really does sound like a completely insurmountable, totally crazy amount of acid. Well, it did, but I'm coming to realise that most I've been told or have come assume about hallucinogenic drugs is ridiculous horseshit, pure unadulterated garbage and not even in the ballpark of a vague approximation of being anywhere close to correct. They've lied to you. Lied and lied and lied.

Back in the day, when Berkeley chemists slaved many hours over a hot stove and churned out the stuff by the barrel-load, I can imagine downing eight tabs would be quite the achievement. Indeed, all those stories about the guy who “took too much” and ended up in a pink padded cell in the psych ward thinking he was an orange fruit and screaming endless that “THE JUICER! THE JUICER!” was coming for him sound almost plausible in the 60's. The acid got weaker, but the price and people's perceptions stayed the same. This wouldn't be a problem if it was as cheap as the states, but here in New Zealand it's thirty to forty dollars a tab, you can't just gobble back a ten strip and float off into fairyland. Even obtaining that much LSD was a significant effort, let alone the cost involved.

Kids today take one tab and think they're tripping, it's a joke. First tab I took I expected leprechauns - and all I got was high. My friends tell me it's self-destructive, that I'm gonna fry my brain with this shit. Brother, sister, unless you've seen the things I've seen, trod the roads I've travelled, you got absolutely no idea. I want to crawl to the edge of the pit and look over. As any investor will tell you, risk and reward are directly related. Ain't no gold without a few dead miners.

As for the trip itself, good, yeah, but with a tiny kind-of hint of disappointment. I felt like I could have handled more. All those cheesy psychedelic effects you see in the movies when someone gets fucked up on some rotten hallucinogenic drug, that's actually what it's like. We walked through the pine forest, watched the trees twist into fractals, built a bonfire on the beach, stared at the flames and talked.

I always wonder why it's illegal, it just makes me so goddamn furious. Everyone should try acid, go on psychedelic holiday and get the hell out of dodge for a while. “Trip” is an extremely appropriate term, like skydiving or swimming with conceptual sharks: scary, exhilarating, but afterwards it's over and you feel like you've really lived, returned from some strange bizarre planet with brand new alien technology—mixed shit up a little. Imagine the headlines: “Man takes LSD! Nothing bad happens, has some interesting ideas”. Unfortunately I can't see that making the frontpage of the local newspaper. Makes me want to go kick a conservative lawmaker in the teeth.

As for me, I'm gonna do something interesting.

As for me, I'm off to bend the iron of the world.