and I brought home enough sage to roll 20 smudge sticks. I'm going to tie feathers and beads to them, all local stuff, and sell them to the city's pagan shops, along with smudge fans. Next year I'd like to do this at the farmer's market, with fresh herbs, wild mushrooms, herbal smoking blends, and other crafts all from locally forged, or grown materials. I'm confident in my ID skills for a number of edible species and the prices for wilds are quite high. I have a growing map of sites where valuable plants grow in public around my city and surrounding areas. Fruits, spices, medicines, herbal smokes, all sorts of stuff that I could deal with in a sustainable manner. Increase the size of...

Last month I attended Starwood festival, which you should all do. There was one ocurance I felt would be worth sharing.

I was at a concert by the Dragon Ritual Drummers, a voodoo/swamp rock band from Canada, something like zydeco with a real hard voodoo bent to it. They played for a voodoo parade and often used traditional voodoo call and responses, chants, drumbeats. They were also involved with a voodoo temple that also attends the festival and puts on rituals. The priestesses were at the concerts, little, old, wide, black, ladies in white gowns. I was standing in the crowd, kinda doing a white-guy-shuffle (i had just gotten there and was still full from dinner, not quite...

Have to say I'm pretty proud of that, I've always tried to write, but never have I felt immensely satisfied with my results, but now, I think I've accomplished something here. I think I've helped people stay safe, go adventuring, confront their demons, discover new things about the world, and themselves. I think I've been pretty entertaining, by and large, though I'll admit a cruel streak, you know, kind of like drugs them selves.

Still got a lot of work to do, I haven't finished my stimulant guide, I really aught get some ethno wikis done, there's always tagging to be done, not to mention I've been slacking in the barley research. I think I'm going to start a Future Caffeine...

...

A weird tidbit on the chemical Hordenine came up in researching the false peyotes the other day. It's a 2C phenylethylamine with a stupid hydroxyl group that keeps it from hitting the 5-HT2 receptor, if I can find some way to prove that 2,000 years ago it was possible for someone to have turned it active, I might just have something really exciting. I mean REALLY EXCITING!

I'll have something posted in a few days down in the ethno section once I get the papers I've found uploaded. If anyone has anything they'd like to share with me, I'll show you the real love.

It would make things so much easier.

God this get's tiring after a while. It hurts to see people doing dumb things over and over and over and over. We try as hard as we can to provide good information and do people listen? Here, a lot of them do, but still, there's so many that don't and that starts to weigh you down. Try as we might we just can't save everyone from themselves and that fucking sucks.

Today, I spent a lot of my time reporting self incrimination, horribly dangerous advice, general rule breaking, and I kept coming across people who've been here for years that don't seem like they've learned a thing. It's even worse elsewhere. I keep tabs...

This was written for a mythology class. We had to tell a myth from our culture, so I felt the need to represent the drug culture. I'd like to thank Dale Pendell for the basic outline of the story, upon which I expanded and colored in utilizind various elements of the Huichol Peyote rituals. This is of course an oral tale and I feel that the transcription looses something, there's some awkward grammar here and there, but that works out with the right inflections and tone. One of these days I'll illustrate it and make a little book.



A woman had fallen behind the rest of her band, exhausted. Having no strength left, no food, she thought she would surely die. She...

man, Alfa is going to announce the gold upgrades any minute, but I kind of need to leave the house now and go find some fun and dinner... lame. Man, I'm gonna pee my self if I get in. It's not unreasonable, I'm 89th in rep, not bad for a board with a few thousand members. There's folks I know deserve it a whole lot more then I do, but one can hope, no?

Got an experiment to run this weekend, been so long since the last one, anticipation is killing me. I keep finding reasons to put it off, good ones i believe, but it's time for some divination this weekend.

Caffeine is used by more people on the planet then all other substances combined and yet is completely over looked here at DF! So through out the month of April be on the look out for a whole slew of articles from growing coffee to blending your own energy drinks, an in depth experiment with the tea so potent the Russians have a special word Zarkavah to distinguish it from tea that isn't a drug substitute in gulags. All this and more comming next month!

For a start, here's a potent little brew to play with. Enjoy.

Aztec Style Gruel: A Speculative Adventure in a Lost Culinary Tradition.

There used to be Aztec cookbooks, but the damn Spaniards took care...

I had a 7mm stone half way to my bladder and it wasn't going anywhere, so the blasted it with sound and vaped it with lasers, it was like a tiny, dangeorus, rock concert in my pee hole.

I've got to say, aside from all the pain and general ennui of the past few days, I feel really rejuvenated. When I got home from surgery (and before those drugs wore off) I actually went kind of nuts around the house, replacing the steel eating utensils we've had with the silver ones should have been using, laying out some earrings, soldered a ring, got a lot of work done. Since then I'm getting my origami organized better so as to facilitate finishing projects as quickly as possible, and generally...

They're going to put me under and put a laser up my pee hole. I like lasers and all, I'd just rather them not go up that way. At least I won't be getting any holes cut in me and I'll definitely walk away with a good medication script.

This is NOT how I wished to spend my week. This weekend is supposed to be the Gem Show and stuffing face with pancakes. Hopefully I can get this procedure done by Wednesday and be up and walking by Saturday.

Least I'll be getting more pain pills out of this.

Other then that, been trying to get some D-limonene to take a stab at a set of experiments posted by Ron69. The chemical is pretty cool, kills ants, cleans...

Yeah last night that happened and I don't know why yet. Went to the doc's, they took some blood and pee, going to run tests. Going to need to get a CAT scan. I'm kind of worried about this all. Figured I'd leave a note in case things get bad and I disappear for a bit.

Man all I've been wanting to do was dance in fire and blood tomorrow. Won't even be able to fertilize the garden properly since my consort won't play if I might be sick.

Well maybe on the next sabbat I'll be in better condition to do my duties.

How to take stimulants to help you study
Guide to getting the most out of caffeine
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NPR: More students turn to 'smart drugs'
The ethics of cognitive-enhancement
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The adventures of an Adderall enthusiast
Caffeine Overdosing