Burning Man – A Caravansary of Folks

Posted: January 11, 2014 in Art, Bike Culture, Burning Man, Cannabis, DIY, Fashion, History, Internet, Literature, Music, Politics, Religion, Science
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This year’s theme for Burning Man has been announced, and it is Caravansary. If you are like me then your first thought was probably, “what the hell is a caravansary?” Quickly followed by the realization that it is a very tricky to pronounce word. A caravansary is a type of walled inn with a large central courtyard that was built along the Silk Road to protect caravans at night from marauders. You can think of a caravansary as a man-made oasis; they offered the same level of protection in their stone walls that an oasis saw from the harsh climate of the desert itself. Caravansaries and the Silk Road were crucial to the flow of information as they served as meeting places for all sorts of people from every corner of the globe, the crossroads.

Now, if you are like me, you probably then realized that this theme doesn’t really add much to the event like previous themes have. Burning Man has had themes for art since 1998, but the art-theme area of the website gives no hint as to the purpose of these themes nor their goal. Perhaps I am off base in assuming the themes are meant to modulate the event to make it somewhat different every year. Sure, Burning Man is always totally different, yet always the same, but the theme offers participants a filter or locus through which to view the event, it points us in a direction and says “go.”

Past themes, like Green Man, Metropolis, Cargo Cult and American Dream have forced us to re-examine our relationships with the environment, our cities, ourselves, and likelihood of realizing the American Dream. While Burning Man is always a leave no trace event, thus environmentally conscious, Green Man took it to new levels with art pieces like Crude Awakening. This was a giant oil derrick which showed humanity’s worship of oil which ultimately erupted into a mushroom cloud of fire when nearly 3,000 pounds of propane and jet fuel were ignited at weeks end. While that might not sound terribly green it is equivalent to “the amount of energy consumed in the Bay Area in one minute” and since the Bay Area was on vacation that week at Burning Man I imagine it balanced out. So while past themes have provided direction to the event in addition to the existing matrix of Burning Man laid out in the Ten Principles, this years theme does not.

Let’s break down this year’s theme. A caravansary is an inn where people from all over the world would get together, drink, swap stories, and perhaps swap more than that in gifts, trade, and lovemaking. By default, in order to be at a caravansary, you were on a pilgrimage of sorts or you worked at the inn. If you have never been to Burning Man let me do a quite comparison for you. If you are at the Burn you are on a pilgrimage of sorts or you work for Burning Man/the Government (“the inn”). Burning Man itself is a caravansary protecting inhabitants from the harsh Black Rock Desert that surrounds, it is our oasis in time and space in a vast sea of dust. Within this grand caravansary there is arranged a smaller assortment of taverns, bars, inns, and lounges, nearly all having some sort of inner courtyard to offer weary travelers repose.

While I am rather underwhelmed by the theme, because it is basically saying “this years theme is Burning Man,” I am similarly impressed. I was forced to learn a new word and I’ve already had my consciousness expanded thanks to my initial opposition to the theme. Sometimes what sounds utterly moronic at first proves to be the best idea imaginable and Burning Man is a great place for testing the bounds of imagination and idiocy. I am also impressed by this year’s Burn because instead of placing the Man ever higher from the desert floor on huge structures, making him ever less ADA accessible, he is returning to the floor of the desert as a MASSIVE effigy.

So how is Burning Man a grand caravansary? And if it is what sort of folks go there on pilgrimage to trade ideas and craft a collective narrative?

Well, there are these kinds of people…

Burning Man – Fun for all ages, old and young.

There are there sorts of people too…

Sometimes a dance floor at Burning Man just looks like a forest of fuzzy coats and furry top hats. This can be both wonderful and very disorienting if high on drugs.

And yes, they’re out there too…the infamous sparkleponies.

A wild herd of sparkleponies have appeared. Not always female, know a sparklepony by their sass, ass, and magical ability to vanish whenever it is time to do work.

Burning Man is representative and inclusive of everyone, including the aforementioned stereotypes of sparkleponies, people wearing furry coats, and naked old people; honestly, they make the event what it is, God bless the sparkleponies and shirtcockers. Past the usual stereotypes and tropes, Burning Man has a lot of techies. Hordes. It’s like SF moved to the desert for a week. The Burning Man census reveals this to be true, showing that over a third of participants still come from northern California, mostly the Bay Area. Most participants identify as being white/not a person of color; the question has been asked in different ways in different years yielding different results.

There also are retired army generals, like former NATO Supreme Commander General Wesley Clark, who was hanging out at this last Burn in conversation with John Perry Barlow (an EFF founder and Grateful Dead lyricist) and Larry Harvey (the main co-founder of Burning Man and its informal mayor). It sounds like the start of a joke; a Dead-Head,  a retired General, and the founder of Burning Man all walk into bar to sit down for a drink. It would be funny if it wasn’t real and didn’t have major significance. The usual belief is that Burning Man is only a place for the fuzzy hats and that clean-cut Good-Ol’ Boys would scarcely want to go let alone be accepted there. Only he did want to go there, no one is forced to be there other than the police and Burning Man staff who provide the crucial infrastructure to keep the event functional and safe. Not only did General Clark go to the Burn he also was accepted and given a rather warm welcome.

Everyone knows that world-class DJs are at the Burn every year, such as Junkie XL, Paul Oakenfold, Beats Antique, and The Crystal Method, but many people don’t realize that non-electronic artists also go to Burning Man, they just aren’t performing yet. P Diddy was sighted around this last Burn as well, sporting a stylish pink parasol. Hopefully P Diddy will join the vast legion of performers who gift their crafts to Black Rock City every year. As previously stated there are hordes of techies at Burning Man, this includes the God-child of all techies, Mark Zuckerberg. Zuckerberg is not alone, he is joined by the whole cast of The Social Network, including the identical Winklevoss Twins and Dustin Moshkovitz. Moshkovitz wrote a great piece about why the presence of techies and plug and play camps should be embraced rather than spurned. I still have mixed feelings about plug and play camps, but much of the bad taste has been cleansed from my palate. Some people need a very sterile environment in order to enjoy the Burn, sometimes for valid medical reasons; who is any one person to deny them that experience? I’m not that guy and I don’t care to meet him.

Mostly you find lots of people like me. We dress however the hell we please regardless of where we are; I wore a three piece suit many days this last Burn, then other days I looked like a “steampunk hobo wizard” to quote a friend. People like me do work, often more than our fair share because we recognize that without someone doing work Burning Man doesn’t happen. People like me are kind of artists, maybe writers, often wearing many hats at different times filling many different roles in camps and in life. We’ll gift you things at the Burn unprompted and without any expectation of return, the way any true gift should be given.

The only people who are not welcome are asshats like Krug champagne who either cannot read, can’t be bothered to read the rules, or worse of all read the rules and think they are exempt from them. Burning Man makes it very clear that you are not to exploit the event for marketing or promotional reasons; this isn’t your photo-op to make your brand seem edgy. Krug thought it would be in the Burner ethos to have a huge invite-only champagne party out on the Playa, exclusively to take promotional photos. They then felt it would be neighborly to leave the place trashed; isn’t that one of the Ten Principles? Oh wait no, it’s not “leave it trashed,” it is leave no trace. Way to go asshats. Some Burners did come by to help clean the mess up, but it wasn’t their mess and that really wasn’t fair to them, but then when is life ever really fair? Burning Man often teaches us, sometimes brutally, that life is not fair (see the yearly ticketing melee).

All things said and done, I love Burning Man as much as ever and would love to make it back out there this year, though I worry about the chance of that given massive medical bills. People complain every year about the theme, how it’s not like it used to be, and how it used to be free, etc. Nope, it’s not how it used to be, no one is driving over tents in the night or shooting guns in city limits. Nope, it isn’t free either, but there are bathrooms provided and other services (an awesome medical system with 3 major locations in the city). Burning Man used to embrace anarchy more than it does today, now it is radical self expression that is embraced. I prefer what it is today, a temporary experiment in city building and the world’s largest living art museum/gallery, and I for one love being part of that grand social experiment in the most famed caravansary of our time.

SSDP – A Great Success Story

Posted: January 10, 2014 in Cannabis, Internet, Politics, Science
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You all may remember my post about Students for Sensible Drug Policy, and how they direly needing funding to further fight against America’s failed drug laws after a major grant didn’t come through. I have good news and then even better news.

The good news is  their IndieGoGo campaign was a complete success and they met their $100,000 goal. The better news was they received an update on the grant and they will be receiving the $100,000 grant as well. This means they are now way ahead in the game in a major election year and have a much stronger position to influence the direction of policy for years to come.

I just wanted to let you know that the campaign was a huge success and personally thank you for helping. I know I was worried when they only had 24 hours to raise $10,000, but they did it and did even more than that. As an SSDP alumni myself I am glad to give back to them and help this great nonprofit continue to be rock stars.

SF History: The Outside Lands and Carville by the Sea

Posted: January 10, 2014 in Art, History
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I live in a piece of history, within a piece of history. My house was constructed in the early 1900’s by Peter Leonard, a residential contractor who was very active building homes in what is now known as the Outer Sunset neighborhood of San Francisco. Peter’s son got ownership of the house in 1936, and at some point afterwards it was occupied by none other  than Senator Diane Feinstein, but that is only hearsay I’ve yet to substantiate. This home, one of the earliest real houses built in the wild Outside Lands of SF, when first built stood among a sea of sand dunes and a shanty town of horse-drawn railcars converted into homes. Layers upon layers, history is like an onion. As my house as its own hidden history so does my neighborhood and both are quite fascinating.

Outside Lands Music Festival takes its name from this rich history that dates back to the Gold Rush. Throughout the 1850s and 1860s these Outside Lands were the subject of many court battles, ultimately becoming part of San Francisco in 1866. Five years later the land that became Golden Gate Park was surveyed and work on the park began, to be completed nearly a decade later in 1880. The park was meant to be a pleasure ground for the people of SF and that has not changed much, and Outside Lands is certainly keeping that history alive. I was a bartender at last year’s Outside Lands and it was easily the most fun gig I have ever worked.

Soon the dunes of the Outside Lands gave way to a Victorian steampunk paradise; a small wild west shanty town transplanted onto the windswept sands of San Francisco. While horse drawn railcars ruled the day during the mid-19th Century, by 1883 all horse lines had been converted to steam, cable, or electric. The tipping point was in 1895, when the Market Street Rail Company ran an ad in the SF Examiner selling railcars for $20 a piece ($10 with the seats removed). So it was that Carville by the Sea came into vogue along with the trend of living in converted railcars, which gave the suburb its name.

Welcome to the rough and tumble rowdy and bawdy suburb, Carville by the Sea.

The prior year, 1894, saw the Midwinter Fair come to Golden Gate Park; this was one of the SF World’s Fairs. This fair gave birth to the world famous Japanese Tea Garden. If you’re interested there is one confirmed Carville house still standing (inside the house). I love the comparisons of early 1900’s hipsters to early 2000’s ones in that last link, as it is totally true; Carville was largely a bohemian artist enclave. While much has changed in SF, some things have never changed (here’s looking at you fixie bikes and repurposed housing).

1894 Midwinter Fair – DeYoung’s Delight

Carville was around for about two decades before the massive 7.8 magnitude quake that devastated SF in 1906. My house had just been completed before the quake hit. I can imagine Peter and his wife, huddled together with their child for safety somewhere in the middle of the very solid house he built. Aerial photos from 1906 show my house still standing strong, just like it is today after another huge quake in 1989.

Carville by the Sea, circa 1906 (the year of the quake).

By 1910 Carville began to lose much of its quirky, esoteric charm as the old car-houses were either ripped down or planked over to hide their roots. At the time this was looking on as improving the community and was celebrated with fireworks, today we’d call it gentrification, followed by another much more rapid round during and after WWII. This finalized the Sunset’s present day reality as a sea of tract houses dotted with islands of apartments and small shoals of Victorian homes, leftovers of a layer of history buried below the sands of time. The fierce Pacific winds still blow non-stop, propelling sand at violent speeds into skin and against stone, threatening to consume the land that humanity has encroached upon. This ever changing yet still quirky and bohemian neighborhood is my home, and I could not ask for a better one.

If you’re still craving some more Carville history check out FoundSF and the excellent book by Woody LaBounty. For some more photos you can head over to Invisible SF.

Note: You may have noticed I took great care not to mention my address or provide any incriminating information enough to out where I live exactly. This is because I believe in practicing locational privacy. Be smart and do not give out personal info like phone numbers or addresses publicly.

A Gay Dad’s Open Letter to the Man Who is Refusing to Eat Due to Utah Same Sex Marriages

Posted: January 6, 2014 in Religion
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If you support marriage equality then you will love this blog. I can’t believe there is an adult childish enough in this country willing to starve themselves to death in order to revoke the hard-fought civil rights of another.

robw77's avatarevoL =

ImageThese past few years may end up being known as the years of “Conservatives Acting Badly”.   At the end of last year the Republicans in Congress conducted a massive foot stomping, pout-out and shut down the government because they did not get their way on the previous healthcare bill.  In the state of Utah, conservatives were shocked when the justice system intervened on the subject of marriage equality.  Now, we have a couple of adult size tantrums in the works.

One is scary thug tactics.  A group called The Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association has called for an “uprising” against same sex marriage.  The other is by a man named Trestin Meacham who is refusing to eat until he gets his way and marriage equality is again banned in Utah.  He stated, “You can start a blog and you can complain on social networks until you’re blue in the…

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Wasted Nights and Wasted Youth: Branded

Posted: January 5, 2014 in Burning Man, Cooking, DIY, Fashion, Literature, Wasted Nights and Wasted Youth
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The second short story I am posting from my novel and the first of which coming from the Burning Man section of the book.

Branded

It was Sunday, that made it God’s day out there in the Christian world. Here at Burning Man, Sunday means it is time to burn the Temple and bring the formal Burn to a close. Tomorrow will be the last official day of Burning Man, but you can stay longer. Right now, tomorrow feels like it is a lifetime away.

For me, Sunday also meant my facial wound from an amazing and daring swordfight was now healed enough to begin flaking off, and the fight itself legendary enough to earn me my own Playa name, Captain Safety. I was amazed by how quickly I healed out here and suspected it had something to do with the climate or alkaline dust. If I nurtured this facial wound right during healing, in time I could have a real bad boy scar. You know, one of those scars with a story, a scar right over your eye. This Sunday also meant I’d regained enough serotonin to be my normal talkative self again, mostly.

The best way I’d discovered to spend the long, hot hours in the middle of the day was with hookah, friends, and Pabst Blue Ribbon. PBR was a fine beer, with a better flavor and usually a lower price than Budweiser and other cheap beers. Yet one had to cope with the hipster stigma attached to it. A devils bargain, but everything was a trade off.

At Burning Man no one seemed to care what you drank or wore, in fact I don’t recall even hearing the word hipster all Burn. Most burners complained more about tourists than hipsters; tourists were people at the Burn as observers, often considered to be not true burners because they didn’t fully embrace the burner ethos. But tourist, like hipster, was in the eye of the beholder and a pejorative applied to a person by a stranger who knows nothing of who an individual really is, other than the caricature they are presenting at a given moment. And moments are merely snapshots in time. Maybe I looked like a tourist, maybe I looked like a hipster. Neither one was relevant when we were all covered in the same dust.

We were relaxing in the long shade created by the RV by the afternoon sun; the whole crew was assembled. There was the Trio de Chicas Locas, the three gorgeous and fierce girls Foreman had helped out earlier in the week when one of them got a concussion. It was nice having a medic in your camp. There was, of course my camp, Coffee and Cigarettes, our leader Rhyno, Foreman, my friend Chyutknee, and various others. We were based after comedy movie of the same name and gave away the very obvious and appropriate coffee and cigarettes, as well as having nightly open mic comedy. We also had some new faces. The Chicas had managed to find a Trio de Australians and brought them over. Two of them looked like decent blokes, and one of them looked like a fucking butcher. It was something about his eyes, kind of shifty and not trusting, which made him seem out of place at the Burn and not trustworthy to my drug addled brain. His eyes and his Mohawk, which was held together by some combination of Elmer’s glue and safety pins, made him look rather menacing. Matching the mis-matched pins through the glue-ridden unicorn horns of his hair were two larger safety pins through his ear lobes. They looked to be the same thing he pierced the holes with originally, who knows how long ago that was.

Ramona, easily the most loca of the trio, was soberly and then drunkenly telling us how this was her last day out here and she had to leave before the Temple burned. Missing this experience was something she was not okay with, but she had a backup plan. She insisted on having an image of The Man branded on her. She wanted a true hot iron brand, cowboy style, though maybe not hog-tied. This gorgeous young girl wanted us to leave a mark on her physically, as we already had emotionally, and specifically she wanted that mark on her ankle.

Her ankles were slender and beautiful. I could wrap a hand around one and touch my finger tips together. In all ways imaginable this was a less than ideal location for a brand. We were in a desert, over 100 miles from the closest hospital. Instead of getting the brand on a nice fleshy area, like her gloriously round ass, she picked her dainty yet boney ankles.

One of the Australians, not Crocodile Dundee or Steve Irwin, but The Butcher, offers to do the deed. “Oy, I’ll burn it on you,” he says with a sly, suspecting, and suspicious grin, “let’s go back to my camp where my tools are.”

When he says tools I see a twinge of something cross his maniacal face and I know what he means.

“My Gods,” I exclaim loudly in my head, still not fully able to articulate speech after the MDMA crash. “This scheming bastard with a rat’s nest for a head wants to take her back to his camp and work her over with his tools. He wants to whisk her away and have his way with her. By the looks of him he’ll rape her, chop her up, and then maybe eat her and only maybe in that order.” You can never tell how depraved these types can be. Retrospectively I am not sure how much of this was the drugs talking to me and how much was legitimate worry for a new friend.

I come back to the present moment, out of my head, to see Ramona beginning to fall into this twisted cannibal’s plot. I grab her by the shoulder, gently but urgently and pull her aside. “Don’t go with that kangaroo fucking madman, you cannot trust people who fuck marsupials. Besides that, did you see the look in his eyes? He sees you as meat, fresh, warm, red meat for the slaughter. The man is a butcher, a kill you first and fuck you later type. Jeffrey Dahmer dressed in a t-shirt and furry boots, every safety pin jammed through his body a former trophy. I count six trophies Mona, do you think this crazed wingnut likes symmetry? I doubt it! Do you see what I am saying?”

She was hesitant to reply, looking torn between perplexed amusement and sage decision making, “I think…”

“What I am saying is we have a propane stove, vice grips, and hell we even have the saran wrap and medical tape we need to doctor it up right. We have you covered, stay here with friends.” She nodded, I had won her over.

“Oy, are we doing this or not?” The Butcher was getting antsy to leave; he knew I was onto him. I could smell his fear.

“Yes, but I’m staying here. Coffee and Cigarettes has everything I need and I would rather not walk a bunch after branding my ankle.”

As a man of many talents who had traveled the world over, Chyutknee offered his services at this crucial juncture. “I’ve branded cows and sheep before how different can this be?”

At this utterance The Butcher dejectedly signaled to Crocodile Dundee and Steve Irwin that it was time for them to piss off. He scowled at me, a crudely mohawked savage with pins through his ears and murder in his eyes. They walked out of camp into the dust laden winds and were soon nothing but a memory.

***

“Alright, if we’re going to do this we’re doing it by the books, as best as we can.” Foreman settled into his role and drew from years of experience as an EMT to make sure our semi-sober selves did not make a complete mess of things. “Captain Safety, get your medical tape and vicegrips. Rhyno, start wiping off that metal necklace you were gifted with this sanitary towelette, we’ll use that as the brand. Chyutknee, get some gloves on. I’ll turn on the stove and grab the saran wrap!”

This process, while done with the utmost expediency, was being conducted on “Burner time,” meaning time became quite relative. Two beers later we were all assembled and ready to go. Ramona was propped up in the comfiest folding chair in the camp, the one with all four legs and no rips in the fabric. Her intended leg was elevated, bare, and erected for this moment of great anticipation. While the necklace was being transmogrified into a hot brand, Mona cracked open another beer and we toasted to her decision.

I had always hoped to witness a live human branding someday. I just never expected to see one so early in my life, or to be so intimately involved in the experience. I even had my camera there to get photos.

The brand was ready and we readied Ramona with a cloth bit in her mouth. With a big grin, the grin of a proud craftsman birthing a new creation, Chyutknee let the scalding, blistering hot metal kiss the delicate ankle of our dear little Ramona, gently, like a politician kissing a baby. As one would expect, she squirmed from the pain but took it well and ended up with a very decent looking brand of The Man. We wrapped it in saran wrap, taped it down like one does a tattoo, iced it, and she was good to go.

Like a real champ, while many of us were still paralyzed with wonder, Ramona laced up her boot over the newly minted brand. She stood up, chugged the rest of her beer and was ready to go party. I was awestruck by this beautiful, tough as nails desert flower who just bloomed before my eyes. This girl was of a breed too strange to live and too rare to die.

Recipe: Buddha’s Hand/Ginger Candy & Simple Syrup

Posted: January 4, 2014 in Cannabis, Cooking, DIY
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Hey everyone! Hope you had a great New Year’s Eve and that 2014 is treating you well so far. I took a few days off over the holidays to spend time with friends and do some serious cooking and crafting, which will be seeing over the upcoming weeks in some great recipe/DIY blogs.

In this post I’m teaching you a pretty basic recipe to make an infused simple syrup, which just happens to create a delicious bi-product of candied whatever. In this case my whatevers are organic ginger and Buddha’s Hand. Though widely known in Asia it is virtually unknown in the West, Buddha’s Hand is a very unique fragrant citron with no actual meat, it is 100% pith and zest. The flavor and scent are reminiscent of a lemon mixed with roses or some other flower. It can be a little pricey, but it is definitely worth it for this recipe which yields a dual benefit for one single hand.

Note: It is possible to make a cannabis infused simple syrup through this method but I have never tried it and question if it really works. I have found many recipes, including in Culture magazine, but without any fat I question what the cannabinoids bind to. I have tried medicated honey sold at the dispensary I work for and it certainly works, but I am utterly clueless on the science behind it.

01

You Will Need: Water, sugar, and whatever you want to infuse the syrup with (options include: citrus fruit, mint, lavender). Recipes range in a 1-1 to a 1-2 water-sugar ratio, that means that if you use 1 cup of water use at least 1 cup of sugar potentially up to 2 cups.

02 (Buddha Prep)03 (Ginger Prep)

Step 1: Prepare the Buddha’s Hand and ginger by chopping them up. I would recommend chunks no bigger than your pinkie fingernail for best candying of harder things like ginger. I left the ginger in larger disks and it did not cook through and was barely edible due to the residual intense burning. I tend to use as low amount of sugar as possible to make it render into a syrup, if you use too little sugar it won’t get syrupy and will stay runny. I personally don’t mind runner syrup with a lower sugar content.

Note: If using ginger it is crucially important to peel it first, for most other things, like citrus, you want the rind for flavor.

04 (Cooking)Step 2: Combine the water with Buddha’s Hand/ginger/whatever and begin to cook on high heat. Add the sugar once it begins to get hot and stir frequently.

06 (Boil It)

Step 3: Bring to a boil continuing to stir frequently and keeping a close watch on it. It will boil over if you don’t stir it enough. Leave it uncovered so liquid evaporates, helping the thickening process.

07 (Cool Down)

Step 4: Cook until the Buddha’s Hand is translucent, for the ginger cook until it becomes tender. The ginger will take a lot more cooking, especially if you leave it in huge chunks like I did.

08 (Drain)

Step 5: Strain the chunks out of the syrup using a metal strainer; I never use plastic for hot things as a rule because plastic melts and might leach toxins into your food. Strainers with prongs like this one are awesome because they rest on the lip of the container you are draining your syrup into.

09 (Sprinkle Sugar + Seperate Syrup)Step 6: Separate the syrup into its final container and the candied Buddha’s Hand/ginger onto a cookie sheet. Sprinkle sugar all over the still wet and syrupy chunks then let them dry overnight. Place the syrup into the fridge to let it thicken over night.

[EDIT: Consider letting your candy dry longer than one night. Mine just molded the other day and it was pretty much the saddest thing ever.]

Voila, come morning you will have both candy and syrup. Uses for the candy include fruit cake, cookies, and other baking projects (or just eating with your hand). Uses for the simple syrup include cocktails, waffles, and in the case of my flaming strong ginger syrup as a cough syrup. Get creative with these. I’ve used the ginger simple syrup for making homemade ginger/tangerine triple sec (hint hint, might be a future blog post here).

Lifehack: Layered Drinks + Irish Truffle

Posted: December 31, 2013 in Cooking, DIY
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Here’s an important post just in time for your New Year’s Eve partying, learn to impress your friends with fancy layered drinks and throw some flair into your mixing. When layering it is important to know the physics behind it, heaviest/densest stuff at the bottom, lightest at the top.

I’m using a shooter called an Irish Truffle as my example for this post. This drink goes by many names and usually has other crap in it also. The original way it was presented to me was just Chambord and Irish Cream in a 1-to-2 ratio of those, and as a layered shot versus a shaken cocktail.

Irish cream to the left of me, Chambord to the right, here I am stuck in the middle with you.

Irish cream to the left of me, Chambord to the right, here I am stuck in the middle with you.

There is a trick to layering drinks, all layered drinks from a black & tan to multi-layered cocktails. That trick is using a wide spoon upside down to cause the liquid to break over a larger surface area with less force, lowering the chance of you messing up the layers. I have layered without using a spoon before but that is much harder and not to be expected.

Who doesn't like a little spooning sometimes?

Who doesn’t like a little spooning sometimes?

If you did it right your end result should look something like this. If you want to glam it up some more you can easily a layer of a clear alcohol at the top, like vodka, cognac, rum, or schnapps.

Shotglass courtesy of The Steampunk Saloon, Black Rock City 2013.

Shotglass courtesy of The Steampunk Saloon, Black Rock City 2013.

I hope you enjoy and have a fun and safe New Years Eve.

Cannabinoid Profile: CB1 and CB2 Receptors

Posted: December 30, 2013 in Cannabis, Science
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See an updated version of this post on The Leaf Online, Meet Your CB Receptors!

 

This Cannabinoid Profile will take a different approach from previous posts. Instead of profiling a specific cannabinoid I am going to profile the CB1 and CB2 receptors, which are the main receptor sites for the body’s endocannabinoid system and interact with all currently identified cannabinoids in some way. A scientific understanding of these receptor points and how the 70+ cannabinoids interact with them and with eachother is crucial to the future of using cannabis as a medicine, for us as a society and as individuals.

Thus far the CB1 and CB2 receptors are the only receptor sites that have been identified that make up the endocannabinoid system. It is suspected that another site exists in the brain, possibly at the TrpV1 receptor or the 5HT1a receptor. Both CB1 and CB2 receptors are coupled to G-proteins; CB1 receptors are present in the central nervous system, both types of receptors are also located throughout the body at certain key points (immune, reproductive).

Here is the general layout for CB1 and CB2 receptors in the body.

While I like this image for the map it provides of CB1/CB2 sites they mis-spell the endocannabinoid anandamide, which is kind of like the body’s natural THC. Anandamide is one of six endogenous cannabinoid receptor agonists that have been identified. An “endogenous cannabinoid receptor agonist” is a cannabinoid made inside your body that triggers a reaction at a particular point. These endocannabinoids are the chemicals that phytocannbinoids, plant-based cannabinoids, emulate within our bodies to produce their effects.

Many of the effects of these various endo and phyto cannabinoids are on our brain. There are numerous locations throughout the brain where CB1 receptors have been found as well as activity at the TrpV1 receptor and 5HT1a receptors.

This is your brain.

See that brain? Look at all those CB1 receptors! This receptors control everything from basics like movement and pain perception all the way up to our higher cognitive functions and learning. I guess that explains why cannabinoids have been found in breast milk in multiple studies. It is enough to make you wonder if cannabinoids are requiredfor healthy human functioning. That isn’t saying everyone must use cannabis to be healthy, but it is saying that everyone needs a functioning endocannabinoid system to be healthy and in absence of one supplement with phytocannabinoids.

That’s the down and dirty on CB1 and CB2 receptors, as with all these posts when I learn more you will learn more and I will update this post.

 

Schools Not Prisons!

Posted: December 29, 2013 in Cannabis, History, Internet, Politics, Science
Tags: ,
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I was part of a student group while at San Jose State getting my bachelors in politics called Students for Sensible Drug Policy. Schools not Prisons is their very appropriate slogan. SSDP is an international organization ran by students for the benefits of everyone, though largely focused on campus policies like passing Good Samaritan policies across the US. These Good Samaritan policies have become a central piece of drug policy reform because they make sense and save lives. In areas without a Good Samaritan policy in effect, if a 20 year old ODs on alcohol in their dorm at school there are strong punitive measures in place to punish anyone who would call 911 to save their life. If 911 is called that 21 year old may face being thrown out of school, any dorm-mate over 21 risks jail-time for assisting the corruption of a minor even if they didn’t provide the booze, in fact everyone present can potentially be found guilty of something. This means usually ODs aren’t called in and people die who shouldn’t, these are 100% preventable deaths and Good Samaritan policies are a way to do that.

As awesome as Good Samaritan policies are that isn’t the point of this blog and I don’t mean to belabor that point because SSDP does tons of amazing things. You know how cannabis was legalized in Colorado? That was us, not totally but we sure helped a ton and a former advocacy director for the campaign, Betty Aldworth, is about to be SSDP’s new executive director. The Colorado success built upon SSDP’s experience supporting the Prop 19 campaign in California two years prior, which was a valuable learning process for all involved even though we only got 46% of the vote.

The point of  this blog is one of charity. This great organization, who has tirelessly worked to improve human rights by ending the drug war, needs our help. SSDP depends in part on government funding and a $100,000 grant they rely on did not come through this year leaving a huge hole in their budget. I am already giving to them monthly and about to donate even more. I encourage all of you to join me in giving to this organization with an impressive track record for success.

Please go to their Indiegogo page to donate and consider becoming a monthly donor like myself.

 

Wasted Nights and Wasted Youth: Extraplanar Travel, Made Easy

Posted: December 29, 2013 in History, Literature, Religion, Science, Wasted Nights and Wasted Youth
Tags: , , , ,
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For those of you just tuning into this blog I post a lot of things about drugs, mainly medical cannabis but I have and will touch on other drugs as well in time. This is a result of the context of my birth and life. I was born in the Bay Area, the child of an original hippie and the career-driven yet fun-loving college girl he re-married to. Put simply I never had a normal childhood by most people’s standards and it has only gotten stranger with time.

I decided some years back to begin writing down my experiences as a series of short stories which has grown into the skeletal outline of a novel. This novel is the product of my life living on the edge of drug culture, it is a partial autobiography, the autobiography of a facet of myself written by the amalgamated self. The book is currently under the working title of Wasted Nights and Wasted Youth, I am doubtful that will be the final title. I will be periodically posting my stories here, I hope you enjoy it.

 

Extraplanar Travel, Made Easy

Salvia Divinorum, diviner’s sage. Commonly known by only its genus, salvia, the true intrigue lay in the descriptive aspect of its name. Divination is the act of seeing a place far removed from one’s physical body. Seeing the future, astral projection, spirit quests, all of these sorts of spiritual endeavors were the domain of this herb. Salvia has a long history of spiritual use with indigenous peoples around the world. Some users claim to see a woman of light who appears to them to give them spiritual quests.

That is all irrelevant in today’s prohibitionist America, what is relevant is that salvia is legal. It’s also quite relevant that it is perhaps the most intense hallucinogenic experience a person can get crammed into ten minutes without their brain melting out their ears. On acid, you’ll see cool patterns, but you still perceive the real world. With shrooms, you may see some things that aren’t really there, and time is distorted, but it is still the real world. On salvia, you go to a completely different universe.

***

            “Ok guys, I got the salvia, are you ready to go to other worlds?” Patrick was normally a grade-A fuck up, at everything. His brain was fried; the result of a lifetime’s addiction to drugs starting before he could even walk. You couldn’t blame him for his mom, you could, on the other hand, blame him for himself. This time he did right and Roy was right to vouch for him, at least this time.

“Fuck yea man. How strong is it?” Roy was a boxer to his very core, training and a preoccupation with strength, never left his mind.

“60X, it’s pretty fucking strong man, it’s strong enough.” I’ve never understood the numbering system for salvia. It’s nice to know what the multiplier is, but it’s worthless if you don’t know the initial amount being multiplied. And if it is zero? 60X of 0 is still 0.

“Sounds good to me, let’s split it up for the four of us. Jimmy, John, how much of this are you guys going to want?”

“I’ll take a quarter.” I’d done salvia before. I didn’t hallucinate that strongly my first time, but I was told after the fact that I “didn’t do it right.” I wanted to be sure to avoid that this time around. Even though I didn’t see things I felt the high come on, like my body coming to the edge of a great cliff then falling off, plunging into a new world. I’d heard of people meeting “Her,” the woman of light, and I had always hoped it would happen for me, but in over a dozen attempts I never had any luck, perhaps today would be different.

“I’ll try a quarter as well. I’ve smoked pot before, I doubt it will be any different.” John was generally quite cynical, and skeptical of new experiences, it served to limit his world, and options in it, considerably.

Roy pulled out his small, indigo blue bong, speckled with flecks of black, patches of navy blue and wine-stained purple. I was familiar with this piece, Roy brought it everywhere with him, it was his “travel bong.” He had a whole mythology around it; he had dreamed of the bong, then it came to him one day as he was shopping for a new bong, after breaking his old one which “never felt right.” Regardless, it was a very cool piece.

We all took our hit in turn; with salvia you smoke an entire bowl to get high in a short period of time. Patrick insisted he got to go first, as he went out to get the stuff and paid for it. Roy corrected him that he paid for it; Patrick, “hadn’t paid for shit, but ladies go first.” We all got a good laugh at this, expect Patrick, who mumbled “whatever,” and greedily took his hit. Roy went next, as he paid for it, it seemed only fair. I left John go ahead of me, so that I would still be sober to babysit the three of them. It would have been nice if someone had thought of that before it was too late and defaulted to me. Normally I may have cared, but watching someone trip out on salvia is pretty fucking hilarious. After they came back to earth, and had their feet firmly on the ground, I took my turn.

***

            One of the nice things about salvia is that you are not out long. With shrooms you might be gone a few hours, perhaps a little longer if you’re on acid, but with salvia you’re only off in space for about ten minutes. This is enough time for a thoroughly enlightening headtrip, as I had just learned, but we’ll get to that in a second. Salvia also has a halo, which lingers for almost half an hour, where you can get aftershocks from the trip and everything has a slight glow to it. Once we were all firmly on the ground again, the real fun began, sharing our journeys with the others.

Patrick claimed he went to the South Park universe, like from the TV show. He was transported right into Mr. Garrison’s classroom, which was being visited by the schools nagging guidance counselor, Mr. Mackey. Patrick had done something which was “not okay, mmkay,” and receiving the full brunt of Mackey-vellian wrath. Even Cartman and the boys had to chip in that Patrick was being a “douchebag.” This was the point where the trip shifted gears and every person became a key on the grandest of pianos which was reality. Patrick was now the sole host to this bizarre concert in his mind, which continued to judge and reprimand him.

One thing can be said of salvia, and all hallucinogens, your state of mind when setting out on your journey can radically alter your course and ultimate destination. The same can really be said of all journeys in life though. What I saw of this while sober was very different, Patrick was pretty much just rolling around on the floor like he was very drunk and mumbling to himself.

Roy said he went to the Super Mario Brothers universe. It began with the couch in front of his eyes compressing to become the two dimensional backdrop of the video game level, the trees and floating platforms that made up the scenery. Then Roy appeared, as a little Mario jumping through the air, grabbing coins and hopping on koopa troopas. He was now viewing himself from a third person camera angle, in other words from outside his own body; out of body feelings are common with hallucinogens and to be embraced. Roy, as a boxer, rolled with the proverbial punches, and dodged a giant bullet while grabbing a fire power up. He was well on his way to saving Princess Peach from the evil Bowser.

Roy was extremely entertaining to watch. He took on a very 2-D shape, like a man in a running position with one leg straight and one bent, and his arms crooked out to his sides. He then hopped in place a few times; I am assuming this was when “Mario” was jumping. The only audible thing he said was “It’s like this,” then he spun in a circle counterclockwise. I couldn’t tell if he had saved the princess or if she was in another castle. He was pouring sweat, and had turned bright red; for some people salvia is a very physical trip, this is why having a babysitter is a good policy for safety. Roy felt a force pulling him counterclockwise throughout his halo; he actually spun a few more times just to mitigate his urge.

Out of the four of us, John was the only one that definitively had a bad trip. He went to a universe where everything around him was fractured into millions of faces. Even the faces were made of faces, and they were all laughing at him. And he saw himself laughing with them; as I saw him sitting there next to me, laughing like a madman. He described it like, “life had been reduced to being one big joke and I was the punchline.” John tended to be a person riddled with social anxiety and this fully manifested in his hallucination.

My trip was something wholly different, something unlike anything I had ever experienced before. Instead of the usual journey to another universe, existing off somewhere in the murk of the multiverse, I went inside the universe of myself. Normally when a salvia trip comes on for me it feels like I get to the edge of a great precipice then suddenly plummet into a new world. Right now it felt like I was riding on an old wooden roller coaster, the kind that always begin with a steep incline up followed by an anticipatory plunge. While I was still slightly cognizant I heard myself exclaim, “I’m tripping balls!” Though it probably sounded more like, “Yiam Tryppy Blals.”

I found myself in the kitchen of the house I lived in while growing up in my transformative years, elementary through high school; up till my parents’ separation. I was sitting at the kitchen table with Roy, John, and a couple other good friends from that time of my life. We were all drinking coffee, out of identical mugs. I had the distinct impression that the cups were new, and the coffee maker was new; in fact many things in the house were out of place from my memories of the house. Then my dog ran into the room followed by my mom.

“Okay everyone, it’s time,” my mom said. At which point everyone at the table stood up, except me. I was bewildered, I didn’t know what it was time for or what was going on.

I stood up and said, “What’s it time for Mom?” No sooner had the words left my lips when everything in the room, every individual object, split into two people, a man and a woman back to back, wearing hunter green sweaters and khaki pants. The table, the coffee mugs, every spoon, even the dog, bifurcated into two weaselly looking glasses wearing strangers. It didn’t stop there, I looked up at the corner of the kitchen, where two walls met the ceiling, and I saw the walls split apart like a movie sound stage, exposing the vibrant blue screen glow behind.

The weasel people grabbed me and the others, and took us ‘off set’ to a backstage area. In this backstage area there was a sea of red shopping carts, all filled with different colored paint. While paint would normally be pouring out all over through the sides of the cart, this was a drug trip so things like logic and physics need not apply. The weasels plopped us all into empty shopping carts. I looked around me and saw that all the carts were full of people, and they were all people I knew from those transformative years of my life. I saw Roy and John’s parents, my own parents, all my school acquaintances. Stranger still I saw an army of me’s, each one slightly different; clearly these were different manifestations of my own psyche.

The camera angle then panned out to a 3rd person camera angle to show me the full breadth of the shopping cart sea. What I saw was amazing; the carts were layered and formed a giant effigy of me. I had the knowledge that I, my True Self in the trip, was located at the right corner of my mouth. The corner of the mouth is a bridge point; between two types of skin, between two places that distinguish a friendly kiss from an intimate one. I am a man on a bridge, torn between two shores.

I was then back inside my own head, back in the shopping cart. I noticed there was a power cable of some sort behind me and though that it was awkwardly placed so that someone would surely trip on it and hurt themselves. I decided to exit my cart and get the cord in a better position. In the process, I accidentally hooked my foot on the cord and unplugged it.

Roy’s mom looked over at me and said, “Oh god, Jimmy what did you do?”

Then Roy, and John looked over, “Dude…”

And my mom joined the chorus, bellowing in my ears and rattling me to my core “Jimmy, then entire universe was created for this very moment, and you fucked it up!” It would seem that somehow I managed to unplug myself, or my reality, or something like that. What was made glaringly certain to me at this moment in my trip was that there was a greater Jimmy, a Jimmy lurking somewhere above my reality and my entire universe was just his drug trip. I was going to show that bastard a thing or two about destroying my reality for his drug trip.

I felt myself get sucked upwards into a great vortex, a swirling brown whirlpool drawing me up towards the greater Jimmy. The way was fraught with peril, the whole time giant hands would swing out from the walls of the vortex to bat me to the ground, where I would lay, back broken, until another me took up the fight. With each successive go I got further and further, until eventually I fought all the way back to full consciousness and merged myself, becoming the greatest Jimmy.

Or had I? Existential fear wracked my brain. Am I the greatest self? Or am I just a lesser part of a greater organism; am I just a figment of their imagination? I consoled myself that if this was the case then life was a stage and all I could do was put on the best show I could for as long as I could. I also took comfort in the realization that man is a social creature, we are all enmeshed in the greater organism that is humanity, or even more broadly in the global system that is Lifeboat Earth. Even if I die, I live on in that greater self, in the world itself.

I had gone inside my own mind, there was no doubt about that. The shopping cart sea was all of the individuals I met that have made me who I am, including different aspects of myself and archaic versions of me. I still pondered the meaning of why I am specifically the right bridge of my mouth. Another thought crossed my mind, though my mother was not made of light, perhaps I had finally met “her.” The question then is, what is my quest to be? This would take further mediation to fully comprehend.

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