The Doc's Continued Existence

Sat, 17 May 2008 22:01:24 GMT

Yay! I can actually sort of use my left arm again! (although they did have to drain the blood from my left thigh again - it's so weird having what looks like a fist-sized bean bag slowly growing under your purple-mottled skin) I can't yet give the twins airplane rides though... "onka pau dat aypee wide?"* they ask, and I sadly have to say no, Uncle Paul has an owie...

(* translated: "uncle Paul (I) 'that' airplane ride", they point and say "dat" (meaning "that") when asking for something, in this case they point up)

And in other news, two 35°C days in a row... geez... this does not bode well for the coming months, I might just melt away one day...

I'm actually doing quite well mentally, despite it all...

Wed, 14 May 2008 05:58:56 GMT

Heh. Heh heh. Heh heh heh. Ha ha!

Life without pain has no meaning... pain/struggle/conflict is in fact what life is all about, life wouldn't exist without it, without The Contest we'd all still just be self-replicating peptides* in some murky pool.

Ok, to sum up the last little while:
- immune storm got worse
- brain inflammation got worse
- but I wasn't aware of that, so it hit me all sudden-like on a walk last week...
- ...causing me to quite ungracefully fall sideways...
- ...crunching my left side into the ground, doing unspeakable things to the shoulder and thigh, they ended up having to drain pooled blood...

Nothing actually broken though. It just all HURTS LIKE ALL FUCKING HELL.

The worst part is trying to sleep though. I can't sleep lying on one side all night. And if I roll onto my sore side in my sleep I wake up real quick, screaming bloody murder.

But, one has to laugh. Patches of me are turning all sorts of pretty colours. It's like springtime just under my skin, all the pretty red, blue, purple, brown and yellow bruise-flowers blossoming within my dermis. Maybe I'll post pictures once I figure out my 'rents' camera's close-up mode.

See, this is what I get for moderating the cannabis intake. Very large amounts consumed a few days beforehand and this probably wouldn't have happened. But predicting *when* I'd need to consume said large amounts is tricky - immune storms can strike anytime, and once one starts cannabis can't stop it... only prevent it... *sigh* dare I say it, I actually need to smoke irresponsibly (all day every day) in order to not die sooner than expected? Bah! Bah I say! (not like I can afford to anyway, blah blah blah world's smallest violin yadda yadda)

(* lysergic acid amides (eg: LSD, LSA) are technically simple peptides... coincidence? but then again so are the active ingredients in spider/snake/scorpion venom. although, perhaps that's no coincidence either...)

Wed, 07 May 2008 07:32:52 GMT

Hee hee hee, I have 10 Lemon Skunk seeds germinating... Kind Seed Co is definitely Kind, they guarantee a 90% germination rate, lo and behold all 10 are germinating...

It's not that I'm bored of Northern Lights #5, but well... OK, maybe I am. I'm going to save some pollen in the freezer from the NL#5 males so I don't have to grow this strain out again when I do some hybrid strains.

My other genetics include some bagseed that I found in dimebags of Stevie Wonder - no idea how viable they are, or whether I'd even want them, normally commercial weed doesn't have seeds, the presence of them means pollen was present, and that usually means there were hermaphrodites in the room... which means these seeds have a 50/50 chance of being hermies themselves. But even hermies aren't useless... cross two of them, and you'll get a mix of some with and without hermie genes - breed from the normal ones. Might do that someday, it was a really good batch as I recall...

I also have 12 seeds from an cannabis sativa (strain unknown) that's from a geneticist working on Hornby Island - these seeds are 27th generation of this strain he's been working on, and once grown out, should produce something really mindfucking (I've smoke some of the plant these seeds came from, hooboy, one-hit-wonder weed)

I'm thinking, if I find a good outdoor spot, this year I'll try some crossbreeding, in addition to the "purebred" lines:

Lemon Skunk female X Northern Lights #5 male

hopefully combine the delightfully aromatic and frosty buds of Lemon Skunk with the relatively high CBD/CBN-to-THC ratio (coucklock!) of the NL#5

Hornby female X Lemon Skunk male

hopefully create a 50/50 indica/sativa combining the heady high of the Hornby with the higher-yield and delightful aroma of Lemon Skunk

Hornby female X Norther Lights #5 male

hopefully create another 50/50 indica/sativa with the double-whammy of heady high of the Hornby and the *mellow* body high of the NL#5

Can hardly wait :-)

Mon, 28 Apr 2008 05:46:38 GMT

Heh, since I now earn revenue from ads on my website (all of $11.47 so far), I've suddenly realized that many of my favourite websites are doing the same - and suddenly, instead of automatically tuning out anything remotely ad-like, I now make a point of clicking on one ad per visit.

Granted, if everyone adopted this attitude, not all would be well... eventually advertisers would catch on that click-throughs to their websites don't actually mean that anyone is mentally registering what their websites have to offer. The whole pay-per-click business model would collapse and... and... well, I'm doing it anyway.

It's the child in me - small immediate gains vs large future gains - as a child I underwent a variety of tests ('cause, well, you know, I'm not neurotypical), one of the tests I failed miserably on was the "would you like one candy now, or two candies an hour from now?" test. Always opted for the one candy now, and an hour later when I saw the other kids get two candies, not happy. But I still always opted for the one. Bah.

...

Speaking of planning badly for the future... my network now totals over 2 terabytes of cumulative storage space (various-sized hard drives ranging from 30GB in my Linux server to a RAID-1 array of a terabyte in my mass storage server, and all sorts of sizes and redundancies in-between). The main Pro of this arrangement: I don't think I'll ever lose data to a hardware failure ever again. Ever. I've got primary, secondary, and tertiary backups of most things, and the more critical items are on the RAID arrays.

But...
...how do I backup the backups?

No, I'm not being facetious, I really do want to know, how do I backup 2 terabytes of backups to something I can take off-site? 'Cause that's my achille's heal in this plan - sure, hardware failure will no longer lose me a single important bit - but what if something were to happen that killed every RAID array in the house simultaneously? Eg: fire, earthquake, police raids*, to name a few... I want an off-site backup just to make it as impossible as possible to not lose data.

Sooo... I'm trying to do it by burning it all to DVD... one... disc... at... a... time... I figure I'll be done sometime in June, after having gone through 3 or 4 100-disc spindles, assuming the DVD-R writer doesn't burn out first. Gah... I want a solution that I can do every week, not something that takes a chunk out of your year...

Ya know, it's getting tempting, just buy the cheapest PC that I can throw a 4-terabyte RAID-5 array into, and physically cart the thing between sites as required... hrm... budget is a problem though... grrrr... frankly it's abominable that PCs have *NEVER* had an easy way to backup the ENTIRE PC on a regular basis, that costs less than $20,000 anyway...

(* The RAID-1 arrays that store my more sensitive information I have surrounded with an air-core inductance coil, any LEOs trying to get past my security will activate the charged capacitor banks hidden in my closet and, well, let's just say the magnetic field produced literally twists the PC's case, it's beatifully horrendous, any metal objects you're wearing get hot, absolutely zero chance of any bit surviving on those arrays)

Wed, 23 Apr 2008 05:38:35 GMT

Round and Round and Round and Round and Round and Round and Round and Round Round Round

Bah. Small immune storm in progress. On steroids again. Much strangeness. One can't be sure to what degree the mental changes are due to the steroids or the brain inflammation. I keep alternating between feeling like God Almighty and a paramecium. Ah, those darling paramecium, and their flailing flagella. Yes, much flailing of flagella.

But, well, you know, taking it all in stride...

...and tomorrow I get healthy. I'd scheduled an eighth-pickup for tomorrow afternoon anyway, good timing, seeing as how I have an immune system to tame again...

Tue, 22 Apr 2008 00:14:19 GMT

This avatar says it all at the moment... :-S

Mon, 21 Apr 2008 04:05:20 GMT

The date is 4-20 and there's a full moon. Cool on both counts, cooler together.

My Daily Battle

Sat, 19 Apr 2008 06:47:42 GMT

the beast is a physical manifestation of the void, the ceaseless hunger, ultimately a battle between my conscious and subconcious minds. a wise man once said to me, "the true test of a man is in his battle with his subconscious. your subconscious contains an enormous void, a quantum singularity of the soul. I could guess as how it got there, but you're not going to get rid of the void by feeding it ever increasingly - it'll just grow to consume you entirely. for you, the only way to win your battle is to deny your subconscious battle - you're intelligent, probably problematically so, but even so I *know* you will eventually find out how to do so."

it is friday. I have Raja Ram's Stashbag volume 4 playing, I've smoked a bowl of weed, I'm very relaxed, playing with energy in casual sort of way... small amounts of cannabis act as a sort of catalyst for energy-work, in the space of about 15 minutes I can build a massive energy ball of human-psyche-ecstasy (heh, watching me during this event is sort of, well, if you know me well it might seem quite alien to my "typical" nature, it's a sort of frenzied-yet-precisely-choreographed dance I make up on-the-fly while listening to psytrance), this energy ball then released into someone's 4th chakra (including the builder of the ball) causes a full-body orgasm lasting at least a minute.

sooo...
relaxing after one such event...

heeeaaaven, I'm in heeeaaaven,
and my heart beats so that I can hardly speak,
and I seem to find the happiness I seek,
when I'm smoking weed and buzzing cheek to cheek

...the beast whispers "you sure you're high enough?"
I ignore it...
...the beast whispers "I feel like more. yeah, a little more. one more bowl buddy, eh? whaddya say?"
I ignore it...
I start watching something to distract myself from this irritating yet mercifully shortlived stage of being high on any substance... (the trick is to never forget it's shortlived, typically less than 15 minutes, if you can just NOT LEAVE YOUR CHAIR/BED/WHATEVER FOR 15 MINUTES you most probably can control the beast)
...the beast, no longer whispering, says "ok. a compromies? half a bowl? yes?"
I ignore it...
...the beast, starting to raise its voice, says "a quarter-bowl. we're talking just a few crumbs here. come on! nothing to fret about!"
turning my attention away from the monitor I look around at the beast, staring straight into his soul-less eyes. I say, calmly, "yes, there are in fact several things to fret about."
...the beast inquires sarcastically "oh yeah?"
still staring, I reply "if I smoke more, I will have less. there is such a thing as a tomorrow. and a day after. rumours have it entire things such as weeks exist. come next week I'm gonna be damn pleased with myself that I still have some left.
..."bah, is that all?" goads the beast
I'm no longer staring, I've gone back to watching something. I say, a touch loudly, "and I am still high, smoking more rarely makes any noticable contribution until one sobers up again. if I smoke more, I will stay up later, and I'm hittng the sack soon."
..."bah I say, if you'd just be reasona--"
I cut the beast off "talk to the hand, face ain't listening"
..."you rat bastar--"
"Round and Round, Is the Sound, that's Running, Through My Brain; Round and Round and Round and Round and Round and Round and Round and Round and Round and Round and Round and Round and Round and Round..."

official victory declared not long after...

Sun, 13 Apr 2008 07:47:40 GMT

(all you LEOs out there (no, not the astrological sign), the RCMP know about this - they discovered it while I was in their custody for an unrelated reason, and I quote, "We're not here for that, it's obviously small and for personal use, we really don't care." - however I might still have some music to face over the lab... I must say though they're being suspiciously reasonable about that one...)

Ahhhhh... just 5 more weeks... just 5 more weeks... (and even so, as the fan leaves start to yellow (due to the plants investing all of their resources in the flowers), they're fair game for early sampling, heh heh heh - and of course, the males are culled as they are discovered, like that one on the left, see its balls about to burst? Gotta nip that one in the bud, so to speak - good for extractions/baking)

So... I've known for a long time now, years in fact, that with cannabis, less is sometimes more. 24/7 chronic usage just, well, gets old fast... so, as you might have read in a recent post, I tend to go through cycles of feasting/fasting...

...but the last few weeks I've been trying something new: I don't toke until 4:20PM. No way no how around that - 4:20PM *precisely*, not a second earlier. And, once I start at 4:20, I can smoke as much as I want as rapidly as I want - for 40 minutes. Not a second more. 5:00PM, I stop.

Not only does this prevent any serious tolerance developing (you know the kind perhaps, where you smoke an entire eighth in one sitting and feel almost *nothing* from it) - it massively increases how long a given quantity of cannabis lasts, my harvests almost last until the next harvest, what I do end up having to buy to fill in the gaps is considerably less.

And I think my immune system responds to this usage better... my face is almost normal-looking (compared to the open sores that the lupus butterfly-rash had developed into a few months ago), and generally I'm just feeling more, what's the word... at ease? Physically moreso than mentally (my mind is still something of a juggernaut to deal with, I mean I've gotten really good at it, but there are still occasionally "those days"). But yeah, for a few weeks now that systemically inflamed feeling that I constantly live with has greatly reduced.

My doc is as encouraging as he can be... lupus isn't on the gov's list yet, so he can't legally encourage me to use cannabis yet, but he is quasi-officially monitoring cannabinoids' immune-moderating effects. He's happier with my new "regimen", he's been trying to get me to successfully self-regulate for years now...

By golly, maybe that horrible Chapter of the Beast phase of my life is ending..? Well, let's see if this sticks first before planning any celebrations...

Sat, 05 Apr 2008 01:48:54 GMT

Do you ever wake up terrified that you're about to be devoured by ravenous man-eating Pliocene clams?

...

Should I, um, repeat that to my psychiatrist? Yes? No?

Fri, 04 Apr 2008 00:47:54 GMT

OK, soooo... mass & energy curve space-time... stretching it sort of... the primary spatial effect being gravity, the tendency for objects to "roll downhill" towards each other (falling into each other's gravity wells)... the primary temporal effect being time slowing down...

...now, what I am suddenly having trouble with, is understanding how a quantum singularity forms in the first place, let alone how it sucks in more matter from its surroundings... see, as the collapsing stellar core shrinks, its density increases, the gravitational gradient steepens... as the density approaches infinity, so does the immediate gravitational gradient... (it's this gradient that causes the tidal forces that rip objects apart as they fall into a black hole)

...so tell me what I'm missing here: an infinitely dense object, having an infinitely steep gravity well, would be frozen in time, right? If to become infinitely slow it must keep shrinking until infinitely dense... how can it? Near as I can figure, black holes collapse for eternity, taking infinitely long to do so, 'cause the closer it gets to infinity the slower it proceeds to infinity... so, near as I can figure, black holes are not zero-volume, it would have an infinitesimally small volume, but non-zero - which means it would have a density of mass / infinitesimal, which... is only infinitesimally smaller than infinity, but not infinity... yes?

Soooo... anything falling into a black hole would take forever to do so, never actually *quite* reaching the center...

I'm not sure this helps me even if I'm right... GAH!

Wed, 02 Apr 2008 06:25:40 GMT

General Relativity... hrm...

Sometimes I drive myself to utter madness trying to put it all into perspective... of course such an attempt contains the seeds of its own destruction, how can I possibly gain a perspective on all perspectives? Gah.

OK... so, the closer you get to the speed of light, the more time for you slows down, relative to a stationary observer. From the almost-light-speed perspective, time hasn't changed, it's the stationary observers who are speeding up.

Now, say you're travelling at 99% of the speed of light. Years become hours. The starlight approaching you will undergo extreme blue doppler-shifting - visible light will turn into gamma rays. Any gamma rays headed your way will turn into radiation even more terrifyingly energetic. Your spacecraft is going to need entire metric tonnes of uranium-238 to act as shielding. Starlight receding behind you will take soooo long to catch up to you it will be so red doppler-shifted you'd need satellite dishes tuned to the microwave radio spectrum to detect it.

Then I got to thinking... what happens to light emitted from an almost-light-speed ship? Shine a flashlight forward, what happens to the beam? Nothing can go faster than light, so, obviously, adding up the speed of the ship with light speed itself is not how fast that beam is going to travel. So, travelling at 99% light speed, the beam leaving my flashlight is only moving forward at 1% of light speed, relative to the ship. I thought at first this must be wrong, the speed of light in a vacuum is (most likely) a constant. But I forgot about the time dilation. From my perspective, at 1/100th stationary time flow, the beam of light travels as far as normal in a given length of time, it in fact is moving at light speed. Shine the same flashlight backwards, and again the photons are moving backwards at light speed from my perspective, and the stationary perspective.

Ah, but what about doppler-shift? The beam shone in front of the ship would be extremely blue-shifted to the stationary observer - a near-light-speed ship would have a leading edge of high-energy radiation. And the beam shone to the back would be extremely red-shifted into the radio spectrum.

In my next installment of pot-thoughts... um... dare I tackle the incomprehensibles of quantum singularities? I've always wrestled with how can a point of infinite density not have infinite mass? Orrr... is it more likely that it's an infinitesimally small point (but non-zero) with a finite amount of density - but, um, then, you can't define infinitesimal without infinity and suddenly I'm left with infinite density and again infinite mass? I mean, what the frig is infinitesimal * infinity? Where do the inconceivably massive and unbelievably small meet? Is it... dare I say it... 1? (but then the cheeky side of me asks "one of what unit & scale?" and then I slap him and go back to watching Stargate SG-1)

Wed, 02 Apr 2008 05:23:57 GMT

doctorstrange, the Reader's Digest version

The Stashbag of Mystery is still on hold. I can never seem to find a 3-day stretch of uninterruptable time (I allow 3 days 'cause somewhere in there are some hefty LSD doses - not that LSD takes 3 days to wear off, heavens no, it's just, say, I get the 1000µg dose, I'm gonna need plenty of reintegration time after that one). What with the kids and all. Holy crap, they are a real handful these days, the twins are the same age of course, which just amplifies the terrible twos they've entered. I figure best not to be around children when one has the instinct-driven mind of a child...

Speaking of the twins... they're lovely adorable little hellions... sure, they're in the "terrible twos" stage, but even so... they're not acquiring language as fast as their peers, and Thomas in particular seems to have no ability to pay attention to *anything* for longer than 3 seconds, all he *ever* wants to do is climb up unto things such as tables and desks and throw everything off of them.

I hate to label kids so early, but we're all starting to wonder about ADHD... a month or so before their birth they were given a steroid to make their lungs mature faster, and a known side effect of that steroid given at that stage of development is to cause ADHD... hrm... well, I guess we shall see. All things considered they are doing amazingly well, seeing as how their doc suggested they be aborted 'cause they'd only have short painful lives... pretty much the only thing wrong with them we've noticed in the last 2 years is a somewhat increased susceptibility to airborne viruses...

A new generation of swordtail fish has appeared in my aquarium. Around about the time the twins were born I bought the first breeding pair. They're long gone, but their grandchildren have just had kids, here and there I noticed a few days ago, yep, there are teeny tiny little eyes staring at me from within dark crevices... I counted at least 4 fry.

This population's family tree is rather complicated and incestuous... all of the fish in there are some combination of sisters, daughters, aunts, moms, of all the other fish. And there's one male, there's only ever one male (all swordtails are born female, when the male dies, one of them becomes male - it's a fascinating process to watch, takes about 3 months). His relationships are even more complicated, example: lets call him gen3male1, he was born gen3fem1, the daughter (and granddaughter) of gen1male1 & the daughter of gen2fem3, he has sisters gen2fem4, gen3fem2, and gen3fem3, um, it gets even more complicated, some of his offspring are also his nieces and one is his sister...

The only way it could get more complicated and bizarre is if time-travel was involved somehow... apparently swordtails are very genetically hardy and all this inbreeding isn't really a problem. I must say, I've had a look at swordtails in several stores since I got the original pair, I have some of the finest-looking...

Oh, and my website has earned $7.44 since I put up the first ads... over 1000 ads served, a click-through ratio of about 2%... thanks guys! I'm sure some of those clicks came from you... I've settled on a look & feel, now I'm adding adding adding content. Almost a full-time job...

Wed, 02 Apr 2008 04:16:11 GMT

herbaceous glory, flowers delight
citrus pine notes, my mind takes flight
the curious tickle, the bronchials dilate
a pleasant numbness... now let's fill my plate!

(yes, an original work, I was cleaning my pipe when suddenly the words popped into my head - the problem is... I think that's all there is... I'd like it to be at least 3 stanzas long, but... but... ah, whatever)

The Doc's 7 Stages of Cannabis Consumption

Stage 1: "Getting Healthy": I buy some, usually 1/8 to 1/4 of an ounce. The rest of the day is glorious...
Stage 2: "Blissing Out": I use too much, too often - but I'm too blissed out to care...
Stage 3: "The Bottom of the Barrel": All too soon, I notice I only have a few bowlfuls left... I start rationing...
Stage 4: "Dining on Ashes": Completely out of the "green", I start looking for the "brown". I sift through my ash tray looking for incompletely burnt crumbs.
Stage 5: "Roasting the Pipe": I heat my pipe, sucking in whatever resinous vapours I can release...
Stage 6: "It's Turtles All the Way Down": Despite heroic measures to avoid it... sobriety must be faced... I put on a brave face and pretend all is well...
Stage 7: "It's Always Coldest Before the Dawn": You could probably find me at this time huddled under my desk in my unlit room, shivering with misery...

...but then... when I feel I have suffered long enough... I buy more! Woohoo! (actually, my delay in buying more isn't purely masochistic, I do it to get "untolerated" to THC, otherwise if I smoke every day after two weeks or so I might as well be sucking on cigarettes for all the good it does me)

Ah what a love/hate relationship I have with this plant... but when I weigh up all the positives and negatives, I find a net positive effect. Mostly due to it keeping the lupus at bay... and the fact that it doesn't *suppress* my immune system, it *moderates* it... so my granulocytes are still useful to that researcher... which is another tale for another time.

Thu, 20 Mar 2008 03:55:43 GMT

Mead - My special version of it

Prepare a starter-culture by dissolving a tablespoon of molasses into a cup of lukewarm soy milk. Add a few teaspoons of yeast (how much depends on the results you want, starting with just one teaspoon tends to cause less yeasty/musty odours/flavours in the final product, but starting with say a tablespoon tends to cut down fermentation time).
Wait a day. The starter-culture should be kept in a warm place (say on top of the fridge) while waiting.
Mix together in a large fermentation vessel (say a 5-gallon bucket with a water-trap CO₂ exhaust mounted on the lid) 1 part honey to 5 parts water
You can boil the water/honey mixture if you want to minimize the likelihood of bacterial contamination, but it tends to rob the mixture of that special honey bouquet - besides, a properly prepared starter-culture will ensure fermentation takes off so rapidly no other bugs can survive
Add the starter-culture. If you boiled, make sure the mixture is room temperature before doing so.
wait wait wait... fermentation could take anywhere from a week to two weeks... anything longer than that and the process has stalled for some reason - if so, try again from scratch. Oh, yeah, the honey used should have no preservatives of any kind, they tend to kill yeast.
Filter the brew... or at least decant it, careful not to carry over any yeasty dregs, then let that decanted mead settle for two more weeks, decant it again, and it should be relatively clear. Try not to expose to too much oxygen during this time, as it promotes the formation of vinegar.
Should be just about ready and fit to drink by now... enjoy!
For variation, one can macerate herbs/spices in the clarified mead to flavour it. Experiment, see what works for you. Some herbs/spices are best added at the beginning of fermentation - hit Google for specifics.

Honey Brandy - As Brandy is to Wine, so Honey Brandy is to Mead

Rig up a still - the 'net is full of examples of how to achieve this, personally I use an organic chem set, a basic distillation configuration with a tall fractionating column and thermometer in the top, water-cooled vapour condenser
You want to heat the boiling vessel to just above the boiling point of ethanol - too low and very little if anything will come over into the receiving vessel - too high and a lot of water comes over with the ethanol
Throw away the first 25mL - it's mostly methanol and simple aldehydes & ketones
distill distill distill...
Keep an eye on the thermometer, it will become *very* obvious when to stop distilling - the temperature will jump from 79 C or so very suddenly to 84 C or so - STOP! Anything past this point is mostly isopropanol and the more complicated and bitter-tasting volatile hydrocarbons.
It tastes best when aged in glass, as little exposure to oxygen or light as possible, for at least 3 months - sooner than that, unless you're distilling skills are way-advanced it tastes rather sharp
If distilled with due care, it should be at least 180 proof (90% v/v). This for some is chokingly, explosively strong (literally too, 90% ethanol is darned flammable, like gasoline). If so, dilute 1 part full-strength honey brandy to 1 part water, this brings it down to 90 proof (45% v/v), which is close to the 80 proof (40% v/v) that most commercial liquors retail as.

Morning Glory Liqueur - Adds Sparkles to Your Day

Take properly aged undiluted Honey Brandy, and stuff about 20 heavenly-blue morning glory flowers into the bottle (that's 20 flowers to about 500mL of full-strength honey brandy)
Let age in a cool dark place for at least a month - it develops a nice rounded floral taste & aroma, the honey brandy takes on an attractive hue from the flowers
Chill, serve with filtered water and sugar cubes, let the drinkers dilute & sweeten to their individual tastes (similar to absinthe, in fact I use an absinthe spoon for this)
Each shot of this stuff contains about half a milligram of LSA - effective dosage varies wildly from person to person, try half a shot at first, wait 90 minutes before deciding you need any more...

I suspect I'm drinking more of this stuff on a weekly basis than I should be... heh heh...

Wed, 19 Mar 2008 07:44:25 GMT

Have any of you experienced The Atomic Coughing Fit? Back in December/January, during my long nasty respiratory-tract infection, well, a lot of damage was done. The doc says my chronic cough could last another 3-6 months, something about the bronchials being hyper-sensitized (all I have to do is breathe in a little too quickly to trigger a coughing fit).

Now, sometimes something triggers the Atomic Fit. This is quite the beast... my lungs expel and expel, air keeps getting forced out, not much gets sucked back in, cough cough cough, over and over, harder and harder, like vomitting from your lungs... and the pressure on my heart becomes such that blood-flow to my brain gets cut off.

This is where it gets interesting. Deprived of oxygen, my vision goes all wonky, a lot like a DMT flash (hell that's probably exactly what's happening, brain thinks it's dying), crawling geometric patterns... the body floods with endorphins... everything just gets really strange and really intense... limbs start shaking uncontrollably... the whole Universe starts spinning to the left and... and...

...the fit ends, blood starts flowing again...

...and a few minutes later I'm normal again.

I used to hate this when it happened... but perversely I'm starting to enjoy it... it's like getting a sudden & massive mainline injection of tryptamines and opiates.

---

Oh, and my Stashbag of Mystery project is on hold for a while, too many more important things to do (like getting my financial house in order, babysitting my niece and nephews)... might resume this weekend... might not.

Wed, 19 Mar 2008 06:41:09 GMT

Alright, Listen Up Kiddies! Mine is a cautionary tale...

...and I'm not talking about drugs this time...

DON'T MESS WITH THE CANADA REVENUE AGENCY!!!

So, like, being the irresponsible ass that I am, I haven't filed an income tax return in years. It finally caught up with me. Soooo... they dusted off their biggest, oldest, meanest adding machines, operated by wizened deatheating accountants, and long-story short, for 2005 & 2006, back-taxes, penalties, and compounded interest, I owe the CRA something like $2000.

That might not sound like much, except when you consider my annual income is about $11,000 - and almost all of it is earmarked for essentials (like rent, food, clothes, meds, etc - the drugs I do are a surprisingly small fraction of my income, well, for a year or so now anyway).

Bah. I'm mostly taking it in stride... I refuse to let money matters affect my health... a small upside is that I also get 2 years of GST refunds all in one go, that'll drop what I owe them to about $1400... take out a loan for the rest I guess... if anyone will touch me, I'm not out of the 7-years-bad-credit that declaring bankruptcy in 2005 caused me...

...needless to say, I'm filing my 2007 return on time this year!

Fri, 29 Feb 2008 19:07:38 GMT

Heh. So I'm watching Stargate SG-1 (still, and will be for some time, 10 seasons to get through!), and it was filmed in Vancouver and the surrounding areas, so every now and then I get to cheer as they blow up the Vancouver Law Courts or other easily recognizable Vancouver landmarks. And it's generally kind of fun figuring out which new alien world is which building in Vancouver filmed from which perspective with which CG content added on.

And I end my post with Vampire fruit & vegetables:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vampire_pumpkins_and_watermelons
seriously, we as a species take weirdness to new heights... brrrl, brrrl, brrrl! (shake shake shake)

Wed, 27 Feb 2008 05:51:27 GMT

- massively dilated pupils
- elevated heart rate
- elevated blood pressure
- blood sugar within normal range
- food tastes *fabulous*
- I've had no drugs since Saturday except my standard meds
- colours keep shifting, generally intensely so
- physical activity is awesome, although I feel a tad overheated (which also feels awesome for some reason)
- composing music is an incredible experience, the notes are flowing out of me quite fluidly

I wonder why... ...or perhaps I shouldn't be wondering and just go with it.

OK, so I'm currently working on interlaced psytrance. Those who have heard Astral Projection are familiar with progressive psytrance. Well, my idea is to basically compose a typical psytrance piece (the formula is quite simple really, almost all psytrance artists follow it, sometimes to the point of blandness), and then interlace the first half of the piece with the second half, so, each bar or phrase consists of alternating notes from the two halves, in quarter-note intervals (if using 4/4 timing, which virtually all psytrance does), or eighth-note intervals (if using 6/8 timing, which, I think, I might be the first person to use such timing for psytrance). I haven't yet decided if I like this sound yet... it has potential... I find it works best with a lot of minor chords, get too heavy on the major chords and it's just too syrupy-sweet-sounding...

Sun, 24 Feb 2008 05:05:57 GMT

Another Saturday, another cap from The Stashbag of Mystery.

... ... ...

Oh Dear Bob, sometimes I'm so good at what I do I scare myself.

Maybe I'll post my notes tomorrow. In the meantime all that porn isn't gonna download itself...

OK, a hint: I have a strong hunch today's cap was a moderate dose of LSA... And LSA always seems to have similar effects on me... hell, if I had enough for a hooker...

Sun, 17 Feb 2008 13:54:59 GMT

Hrm, I seem to recall promising to post about several things... one was my niece and nephews, I've done that one (unless of course you want to hear more?)... another was TV shows...

So... All About TV!

Strictly speaking I don't actually watch TV, I don't have cable (yes, I have a cable-modem, but I'm not paying for cable TV so the notch filter in my cable box prevents me from watching anything that way). But I do download a lot of TV shows, yes, quite a lot. It truly is the way things will be for everyone someday, commercial-free viewing-on-demand, unless the DRM bastards (Micro~~scum~~soft, the MPAA, et all) have their way of course, but I'm confident us hackers will always find a way around anything they invent, those organisations will just have to figure out a new business model is all.

Anyway...

Heroes: I'm still undecided about this show. I watched the first season practically in one sitting, and I remember I kept asking myself "Why bother? This show sucks." I almost deleted the torrent, but, for the sake of completeness, I kept watching... suddenly around the 14th episode or so, quite to my surprise, I found myself, well, sort of hooked. Like nicotine, I wasn't really enjoying it but I couldn't stop either. Season 2 was actually starting to genuinely interest me, but then the show went on hiatus and still hasn't come back, and I find myself eyeing that torrent's directory and thinking thoughts like "I could really use the extra free space" and "You know, I'm not really missing it, why bother continuing at some point in the future whenever they deem us worthy enough to come back?" So. Someone convince me to remain a fan. If fan is what I am.

House: Gah! Damn and blast it! OK, I watched seasons 1 & 2 pretty much within the space of two weeks. The formula becomes painfully obvious after a while, but, for some reason, I really enjoy it anyway. Season 3 I watched each episode as it became available, and I must say, enjoyed it greatly. Of course, then they changed everything - or so it would seem. (and the less said about the season 3 finale, the better, *shudder* that's one of my worst fears) Season 4 mixed up the formula somewhat what with all the new people and all, but, when you boil it down, it's still the same show, and still works for me for the same reasons. But... of course... just as the season was starting to get really interesting... HIATUS! I'm so mad I could almost boycott the rest of the series... I need my weekly House fix almost as much as House needs his Vicodin. Will I find, after the withdrawal pains dissipate, that I don't miss it? We shall see.

Lost: Like House, I watched seasons 1 & 2 in the space of a few weeks. I liked this show from episode 1, it really gripped me. But, I'm starting to think that was only because I got to watch it whenever I wanted to watch it... Season 3 I had to watch each episode as it became available, and, well, I started losing interest... every week I'd search for the new episode's torrent later and later in the day, then it happened that I wasn't even looking for it until the next day, or the day after... but I kept watching, and it kept me interested enough to keep watching. But this new season... I don't know why, but it is *really* irritating me. All the flash-forward scenes I suppose. Seems like a really gaudy form of story-telling to me. So. Someone convince me to keep watching this show. I'll give it a few more episodes at least, I owe them that much, but if they don't shape up, I'm outta there.

The IT Crowd: Someone, please tell me, they'll be back soon? I *love* this show! I must have seen every episode 10 times each by now and they're still quite watchable even though I have every pixel of every frame memorised at this point... heh... it's so close to real life as an IT monkey it's scary (that statement comes from 5 years of working as an IT monkey - just like in the show, I thought I was the manager of IT until one day without even telling me they hired a manager, who, just like in the show, new next to nothing, and I found myself on the bottom rung, doing all the work and getting none of the credit, and, well, it all just got worse from there) Actually... why do I love this show? You'd think it would be a painful reminder of the second most painful period of my life... but... it's damned funny! Ah well.

Enterprise: Yes, I know this show is dead, but I did just watch all of it. All four seasons, in the space of about a week. You know... I always swore I'd never watch it... but, I got bored one day, next thing I knew I'd joined an Enterprise torrent, and well, it got watched. Now, having watched it, I do have to say, it's better than a lot of people give it credit for. There are some really, really stupid episodes, but there are also some really good ones. In many ways it's sort of like the original Star Trek (of which I'd say about half the episodes stand the test of time). However, that whole temporal cold war thing, blah, those writers deserve to be beaten with an oar. If you accept Enterprise as being canonical, then you must also accept that Next Gen, DS9, and Voyager probably never happen (of course most would argue that Voyager isn't canonical either, and I tend to agree). Heck, the original Star Trek probably never would have happened, you know, that whole chaos theory thing, I mean in Enterprise they kill 7 million people who hadn't died originally in that way, you can't make that sort of change to the timeline and expect the future to look at all remotely similar. Heh, and their attempt at explaining the difference between original series Klingons and the later series... geez... Worf said it best in DS9, "We do not talk about it." Should have left it at that. And what's with all the hyper-emotional Vulcans? OK, Spock was half-human, he had a good excuse, but Tuvoc seemed even worse, and.. um.. Tapol? whatever. She was even worse than Tuvoc! Bah.

The Wire: Benn, thanks for pointing me in the direction of this show. Much like Oz, I get an anxious, sort of uneasy feeling watching it... but I can't stop watching it... and it gives me something to watch on Sundays, an otherwise pretty much dead-boring day (since I no longer watch the Simpsons). It's quite well-produced, the characters and stories actually seem to have had some effort put into them (without being obviously so)... but, man oh man, this newest season, I know not where it's leading and that worries me... in a good way... heh.

Stargate SG-1: Another dead show. Why-oh-why had I never seen this show before? I'm half-way through the first season and definitely hooked. It's sort of like Star Trek remixed, but unique enough that I'm not always drawing comparisons (and, dare I say it, SG-1's grasp of science is a lot better than Star Trek's, but of course far from perfect). Perhaps more on this one as I watch more of it...

Hrm. I thought I had more shows to talk about, but I can't remember any more. I think the only current shows I'm watching are Heroes, Lost, House, and The Wire. Any suggestions on any I should be adding to my weekly schedule? Heh, not that I need to really, I spend far too much time gazing at this monitor as it is...

Sun, 17 Feb 2008 12:28:03 GMT

Note to self: next time I swallow a Mystery Cap, hide the moonshine and unplug my computer.

Ugh.

Ugh.

Ugh.

For every ounce of pleasure, there is an equal ounce of pain waiting for you...

...of course, one isn't thinking about that when the goblins are chanting "Drink! Drink! Drink! Drink! Drink!" and one is staring at a 500mL round-bottom flask half-full of crystal clear incredibly smooth 180 proof monkey juice.

All things considered though, I consider yesterday a success. Despite my physical state, I was able to take notes... and surprisingly they still make sense...

Edit: I've just noticed that my room is littered with empty yogurt containers. Yeesh. No wonder I feel a bit off (aside from the obvious reasons of course).

Sun, 17 Feb 2008 03:06:25 GMT

Hoo boy.

OK.

Scratch going outside.

Not only is it very, very cold. Cops have descended upon the neighbourhood. Four houses down, the place I've suspected for a while is a grow-op (due to the wonderful fresh cannabis aroma that always lingers around there).

But I must stay away from LiveJournal. Yes, I must. Must indeed. Maybe I'll go watch more Stargate SG-1 episodes, several seemed to have completed since I last checked that torrent...

yes...

...SG-1...

...yes

Sun, 17 Feb 2008 02:55:25 GMT

Another Saturday, another cap from The Stash Bag of Mystery!

It entered my digestive tract about an hour ago...

...
...
...

I'm very perfused. um. perplexed/confused. confexed? hoo boy. no idea.

It's either psilocin or dextromethorphan. body high similar to ethanol, mental high is... just... I have no idea, could be a tryptamine, could be a dissociative (if so it's more like DXM than K), not really much in the way of visuals yet which is how I suppose I'd tell the difference... But different than last Saturday.

I'm guessing psilocin, but I don't recall mushrooms being so drunk-like...

oh. wait. what the fuck was that? Aha! There it is again! Faces are rising up out of the walls, and two colours are becoming dominant, orange and blue. Almost certain it's psilocin now.

Starting to get a very strong urge to tell each of you exactly what I think of you and why, but, no, I'm logging off now, gonna go run around in the cold winter night instead, probably better all things considered... as a wise man once said, "You can't teach a pig, it only frustrates you and annoys the pig." So there. Nyah-ha-ha! Waffles!

Fri, 15 Feb 2008 22:54:49 GMT

So I finally got to see my newest nephew Nicholas, seeing as how my doc has *finally* declared me healthy.

10 lbs 10 oz at birth, more than Elizabeth and Thomas *combined*. Dare I say it, he looks cuter than Elizabeth or Thomas did, heh... (of course they were premies and didn't really flesh out until a few months after birth). Dark skin & hair, the gypsy genes (from like my great-great-grandmother according to the family legend) are quite evident, seems to skip every other generation. Heh, I have to stop saying "the twins" now and start saying "the kids".

Only one little problem, however... he has an enlarged kidney, as yet they don't know why. Could be a blockage (which would need surgery)... could be the start of an infection (which could become quite serious)... or it could just be a large kidney. Obviously we're all praying for the latter.

Heh, I'm always fascinated by newborns... they always seem to have this internal struggle of titanic proportions (when awake anyway), although I suppose it's usually just gas... yeah, probably just gas... when they fart they kinda smile... which makes sense, it can feel really good getting rid of gas...

When the twins saw him for the first time, they knew something *big* was happening, and when Thomas got his first look he started grinning and stood their gazing at his new little brother... Elizabeth seemed a bit perplexed... she stared at him for a minute without moving or saying anything, then suddenly piped up "What is it?" Cute.