← Autodidact Archive · Original Dissent · Okiereddust
Thread ID: 7047 | Posts: 37 | Started: 2003-06-01
2003-06-01 05:08 | User Profile
**Recently I read a thread todd had posted in which he was under attack for being a self promoter. Just now as I was sitting on my front porch listening to the rain fall it occurred to me that in the past I had attacked him for the same thing.
I thought Todd was a complete narcissist.
What never occurred to me was Todd is a writer, and from what works of his I have read a damn good one regardless of the content. In the past I have known a few successful writers and the common thread among them is self promotion.
It's a necessity in their business, facing rejection at every turn and tirelessly having to move forward. Keeping their creativity left intact is almost impossibility for most. I would just like to say, I thank Todd for being here and sharing with us and hope he will continue to do so.
And Thank him for being what I consider a good friend after all the hard times I have given him in the past.
Many here have wildly diverse backgrounds and sometimes we need to look deeper at the others we argue with to understand their point's of view.
Anyhow, Please accept my Apology Todd.
And don't let anyone give you any sh*t.
Your friend, Patriot
[url=http://www.libertyforum.org/showflat.php?Cat=&Board=news_members&Number=652442#Post652442]Liberty Forum[/url]**
2003-06-01 05:23 | User Profile
Weisbrot, it's you're turn ;)
2003-06-01 05:30 | User Profile
He has to read Todd's book first.
2003-06-01 05:35 | User Profile
Originally posted by madrussian@Jun 1 2003, 05:30 ** He has to read Todd's book first. **
Don't you have to get stoned to read Todd's book? :D
2003-06-01 05:37 | User Profile
But then you'll never finish it. A paradox? :shock:
2003-06-01 06:29 | User Profile
Why would anyone want to apologise to that dumb prick?
2003-06-09 23:23 | User Profile
Never saw this thread at LF.org. So, thanks "Patriot."
madrussian: I'm sure if Patriot digs my writings elsewhere, he'll also dig my novel (one of 3 books, actually); as have 95% of of the 55+ (published) reviewers who've dissected it. :th:
jj: ho ho... :1eye:
2003-06-10 01:58 | User Profile
Originally posted by toddbrendanfahey@Jun 9 2003, 19:23 **I'm sure if Patriot digs my writings elsewhere, he'll also dig my novel (one of 3 books, actually); as have 95% of of the 55+ (published) reviewers who've dissected it.ÃÂ ÃÂ :th:
**
I've read a representative portion of it. As a layman, I'll keep my opinion to myself. Besides, there's plenty of layman opinion- i.e., the paying public- to be found elsewhere...man.
Todd Brendan Fahey: "By the time I'm through with this whole Wisdom's Maw process, I really feel I could and should command a $100k yearly salary at a NY publishing house. 'Cause, if Wisdom's Maw takes off as a seller, it will be me & no other who got it there*."
(Amazon) Product Details Paperback: 222 pages Publisher: Far Gone Books; (January 1995) Amazon.com Sales Rank: 2,445,267*
Was there something in my drink?, March 6, 2001
Reviewer: R N OWEN (see more about me) from FERNDALE, MID GLAMORGAN United Kingdom
"This is, firstly, an entertaining read. Secondly, it's funny. Thirdly, the subject matter has had just about every other kind of treatment at the hands of writers over the years, so why not find room on your "drug shelf" for this? File somewhere between "The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test" and "Acid Dreams". There's more than one way of getting a feel for the era covered by this book, the "Acid Age", and there'll be more "facts" available in other works. So do you want to be entertained while getting a slightly screwy version of what happened? Buy this book! And don't take the brown acid, man."
The literary equivalent of a bad trip, September 4, 2000
Reviewer: buttergun (see more about me) from Dallas, TX USA
"This book was awful. Passing itself off as "The Acid Novel," it details the hidden side of the 1960s: Ken Kesey, Jack Kerouac, Neal Cassady, and Alan Ginsberg were all Government dupes, whether they knew it or not. The CIA is behind them all, trying to create a superman through LSD. An interesting idea, maybe, but Fahey destroys the entire concept with his incredibly ham-fisted and labored writing. Luckily though, he keeps the book short. Rumor is that this book was turned down by nearly every major publisher because they feared it might be incriminating; Fahey uses the real names of all the dead personages, such as John Kennedy and Jack Kerouac, etc, but uses fake names for those who are still alive (save for Hunter Thompson): Ken Kesey becomes Franklin Moore, Alan Ginsberg (who was alive when this was published) becomes Carlo Marx, etc. But it's still obvious who these characters really are, and therein lies the reason behind the publishers' supposed worry. I think the real reason this book wasn't picked up by a major publisher, though, is because it's atrociously written. Fahey uses the most hackneyed metaphors and descriptions, and his grammar isn't the greatest either. Commas appear to break up sentences where they aren't even needed, and I feel like I'm reading something by a junior high student who's really, really trying. As the book progresses, what happened in real history is changed around, with Kesey's character spending time in jail before being abducted by Government operatives whom intend to erase his existance; a rescue maneuver right out of some lame action film ensues. And that's another thing: Fahey throws in these useless action scenes throughout the book, obviously trying to spice things up (as if his concept wasn't interesting enough), but these action scenes just come off as forced and unecessary. And finally: the About the Author page, at the very end of the book, which is very obviously written by Fahey, claims that the author doesn't submit his material to writing contests because that's not the sort of thing he does, so this is why he's never won a writing award. Sure. Maybe he should start submitting to them, and when he doesn't win, he can suspect yet another conspiracy, one which is laboring to keep him out of print, to keep his wild ideas away from the public eye. Now, that's my kind of conspiracy!"
On the other hand, to use the TBF-touted, TBF-ex-wife-spouted phrase:"Never, ever a dull moment around the Toddmonster."
Todd Brendan Fahey: "I have a deeply-embedded fear of being 'straight.' I'll be frank about it. I have been enamored of chemicals since my childhood and it is surely the bane of my existence. I lost my wife over it just this past year. I love her and respect her enough to have finally told her, 'l can't promise I will change & a promise is what you want.' So, we divorced after 5 1/2 years of a rewarding and tumultuous marriage. She did not know about my LSD intake during the writing of Wisdom's Maw. I hid it from her - an LSD addicton that sometimes went for 40 days in a row..."
Todd Brendan Fahey: "I don't have much going for me these days - I'm probably unemployable in terms of a tenure-track teaching job, even though I will have my Ph.D. by May '97. God bless the school that gives me a gig. A "charitable institution," indeed. I have my writerly reputation and I can't afford to soil it."
Todd Brendan Fahey: "In May, I will release my demented short stories, titled Dogshit Park & other atrocities, which are the blackest things to come out since the heyday of Burroughs, Terry Southern and Hubert Selby, Jr..."
Todd Brendan Fahey: "I've been writing a goddamned long time. I wrote my first book-length nonfiction 'novel' - a thing called Hell Bottled Up: Chronicles of a Late Propaganda Minister - in 1988, in my first semester at USC. Wrote it in a white-heat in six months, basically smashed on acid. Hell Bottled Up! is an autobiographical novel centering on my two violent years as a right-wing activist in Arizona...You drop the name Todd Brendan Fahey around certain circles in Arizona today and you better watch your back. Oh, I've lived a really weird life...I don't know whether to laugh or cry. But I was also a terrible drunk and was more than a little curious about psychedelics. Plus, I was a slut. (Heeee.)"
Todd Brendan Fahey: "I'd rather be writing than doing just about anything - except maybe cruising the Red Light District of Amsterdam...so let me get back to work."
.
2003-06-10 02:25 | User Profile
Hi, "weisbrot":
You keep droning on about my writings; and I'm flattered that you like to post them all over this board. :) You're saving me the trouble of doing so.
But what's yr point? I straddle the line between libertarian and JBS-style right wing (conspiracy-oriented: anti-CFR/Trilateral Commission). I've left a 13-year paper-trail, much of it on the Web. It's no secret, either that I've indulged in (the horror!) DRUGS, or that I've partaken of the Red Light district of Amsterdam. If I wanted to keep that kind of thing hidden, I'd not speak on-record and "for-print" on the subjects in countless venues.
So, you're flogging yr meat here, buddy. Redundancies. Get a life (try writing something of your own for a change, instead of posting others' works). :rock:
2003-06-10 02:42 | User Profile
[As for the reviews, you left [about 50] out of yr last post; here's a sampling]
Wisdom's Maw
Review excerpt by Tom Dolby, The Village Voice
"Fahey paints a vast tableau which includes virtually every major political and pop-cultural figure of the 1960s--from Jack Kerouac to Jack Kennedy, Aldous Huxley to Hunter S. Thompson... Do we smell a movie deal cooking with the acid?"
WISDOM'S MAW
by Todd Brendan Fahey Far Gone 1996; $16.95 222 pp; ISBN 0-9651839-0-4
Think of the 1960s as CIA mind control experiment. Part of this novel is about a man named Franklin, noticed by the government as a potential student leader, who is kept supplied with LSD and other drugs by his girlfriend, an undercover FBI agent. Among the guests at his commune/hippie pad are people like Jack Kerouac, Neal Cassady and Hunter Thompson, similarly well supplied with drugs. Included is a look inside MKULTRA, where various high military and government officials occasionally sample the wares. A high-class black prostitute is used by the FBI for possible future blackmail against her customers, like the Supreme Court Chief Justice.
This is a really good, and really strange, sort of novel. The thought of the CIA feeding drugs to Americans is handled very plausibly. This is a fine one for those who like the stories a little weird, but also grounded in reality.
Reviewed by Paul Lappen 8/23/98
Wisdom's Maw
Midwest Book Review
The recreational use of mind altering substances began with the invention of fermented beverages somewhere toward the end of the stone age. With the coming of agriculture came the arrival of certain plants as a means for mind "expansion" experiences. The industrial age was also the era of man-made mind-bending pharmaceuticals. The "information age" is now well along in giving us "virtual realities" along with our chemical ones. So Todd Fahey's "acid novel" Wisdom's Maw is a work of complex, insightful, controversial fiction whose time has come. Wisdom's Maw alters convention reality and our inner mental landscapes with the combined finesse of a buzzsaw and and the accuracy of a laser beam. Wisdom's Maw is a page turner and a mind burner of a novel that will leave the reader mentally breathless. Wisdom's Maw is a head-trip on paper and destined to join other cult classics like "On The Road", "Stranger in a Strange Land", and is a kind of "Alice in Wonderland" for grownups in the 90s.
Wisdom's Maw
Review by James Kent, High Times
...All in all, Wisdom's Maw is quick-paced, engrossing, and at times quite dizzying. The casually sinister way in which LSD is gulped down by (and secretly slipped to) all parties involved fills this book to the brim with depravity, sex (lots of sex), chaos, paranoia, murder, and general bad craziness. The cold, unflinching way Fahey exposes the dark side of LSD use shows that he is certainly well aquainted with his subject matter.
Wisdom's Maw
Review blurb at HotWired.com
Wisdom's Maw is a deliciously paranoid novel about the CIA and LSD.
Wisdom's Maw
Reviewed by Michael Crown, Ink 19
This novel takes the premise that the drug counter-culture of the '60s was engineered by the CIA in an effort to undermine the political left, and spins it into a very entertaining read. By weaving together a "fictional" conspiracy around the Merry Pranksters, Project MK-Ultra, the Hell's Angels, Aldous Huxley, the CIA, and yet another twist on the JFK assassination, Fahey creates what could possibly be the first of a new genre -- a spy novel informed by the characters and events in popular/underground culture. It seems that Fahey uses real names where the character is dead and pseudonyms when they are not. Those familiar with the history will have fun figuring out who is who. He chooses Franklin Moore (a.k.a. Ken Kesey) as the central character, and we get to vicariously enjoy some of his "fictional" exploits as the story unfolds. A great deal of the fun with Wisdom's Maw is trying to separate the fact from the fiction, but as the story takes hold the distinction becomes less and less important. Possibly a bit like some of the chemically induced experiences Fahey's characters helped introduce to the masses.
Wisdom's Maw
Review by Tom Harper (Canadian writer; review syndicated in many newspapers)
Fahey blends reality and drug-induced fantasy, weaving a layered tapestry of themes, laying a mosaic of the tiles, tales and legends of the sixties. On occasion, it is somewhat disconcerting when well-known public figures walk through this work of fiction. But the author handles it in such a natural and unpretentious manner, that it works. And is sometimes hilarious. Though it makes it all the more difficult to discern truth from fantasy, not unlike an acid trip itself. No doubt some 'serious' critics will dismiss the book on this account, and attempt to trivialize its importance. If so, they ignore at their peril a very fine piece of sustained writing, an intricately plotted action adventure novel, and perhaps the first best history of that era yet written.
Wisdom's Maw
Review excerpt by Ernest J. Gaines (MacArthur "Genius" Grant recipient; author, The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman)
"...You have written a very controversial book here, and if it is published and read, you might have to answer some questions to some pretty big boys. I hope you have the backbone for it."
[...I could go on, but all I have left to say, "weisbrot," is, Hi, Asshole! :)]
2003-06-10 04:57 | User Profile
Todd, you take an unbelievable [and wholly unwarranted] amount of sh*t from the same few dingleberries on this board. Edward Gibbon refers to his published work just as often, and with good reason....you could die of old age waiting for a publisher to properly promote any author not on the A list.
Then these same critics later wave their crying towels every time the latest socially-promoted 'author' makes the rounds on Oprah's book club before the inevitable optioning of the property by Hollywood.
Pay no attention to the chuckling of these smug termites.
2003-06-10 13:35 | User Profile
*
2003-06-11 17:25 | User Profile
il ragno:
Thx again for the kind words.
The evidence speaks for itself. A$$holes like "weisbrot" like to pick around the edges, but they can't (ever) dismantle 13 years of published work...which is what I've accomplished. They can't ever undo 50 very fine book reviews of one of my books. They can question my "moral rightness," my "committment to white nationalism," blahblahblah; but, in the end, they (a$$holes like "weisbrot") have to deal w/ the fact that yrs truly has persisted and succeeded, on the whole, in my goals and ambitions. & that's more than most people can say at age 38.
Sure, it can be said, "a major publisher didn't take your book." Or that "you haven't made a ton of money on your book." I had an offer from Random House, for $60k, to rewrite the book using pure 1st-person. I declined. Cd have taken countless editor jobs in LA and NYC, declined that hamster-wheel, too.
"weisbrot" should be glad that a sometime-druggie and now-resident of Asia is also fundamentally of the Jeffersonian anti-federalist mind, writes and publishes politically along those lines (I haven't written fiction since 1996) and more than occasionally bridges gaps (in forging alliances) between libertarian/anarchist influences and that of the hard-Right. Foremost, I'm honest. I write under my real name; I don't conceal my motives or agendae or past deeds (or misdeeds).
I have very few regrets and little guilt. Despite a few mistakes, which I've largely atoned for, I sleep well at night.
Thx again for weighing in on this thread.
TBF
2003-06-11 17:41 | User Profile
[url=http://www.newworlddisorder.ca/issueone/interviews/faheyinterview.html]http://www.newworlddisorder.ca/issueone/in...yinterview.html[/url]
The evidence speaks for itself. ..
...I feel now to be a meaningful part of God's plan, which is still mysterious to me, but of which I am being shown ever-more frequent glimpses (--a sort of risky exercise in traveling through one of Stephen Hawking's theoretical wormholes to the Source).
It all began one day in high school, with a bag of magic mushrooms. Old friends from those days still tell me about "the time Todd Fahey took mushrooms for three-days straight," and came out a different chap. Psychedelics turned on a Satirical component of my being that I didn't know I had, previously. I became a connoisseur of Black Humor after those trips: a voracious reader of Hunter Thompson, Burroughs, Swift, J.P. Donleavy (The Ginger Man), etc.; and also of the Greeks (Heraclitus, Plato, Aristotle, Plotinus), who are very much seeking after answers as to the composition of the Soul and the duties of man in his lifetime.
At first, I would go on an acid- or 'shroom-trip and be terribly confused upon coming down, because it (the experience, all I was "shown") was so intense and incomprehensible to my immature psychology and vocabulary. I would be frustrated that I was unable to put It (which was, precisely, "me" changing, growing, as God hath directed me to do, tho it's taken a long f*cking time) into words...
During the period of November 1990-March 2000, I had been a fixture on a Web site called FreeRepublic.com, which is Rightist/libertarian in nature, and which counts amongst its participants and lurkers, such media gurus as Sam Donaldson, Rush Limbaugh, Britt Hume, Ann Coulter, Sean Hannity and others. FreeRepublic.com draws 450,000 verified hits daily, and is THE site for news relevant to keeping one's soul clean of the disinfo that is foisted upon us all by mainstream media...
It was about that time that, while listening to John Coltrane's Giant Steps, with a headfull of Ketamine, laying on my bed, earjacks firmly implanted into the skull, and really grooving to Coltrane's genius, I was literally JERKED RIGHT OUT OF MY BED by a force. I found myself being dragged first through my bedroom, then into the livingroom, my legs and spine stiff and seizing to a feeling that I was not in control of mine own movements. I've been whacked before, on many chemicals, but nothing came close to this. Then I started to perform some ritualistic dance that included savage kicking motions and very orchestrated finger movements. It all seemed quite logical, for a few moments, and for a little while I "understood" why I was doing what I was doing, but my capacity to explain it now is no longer.
But after a few minutes, some part of my brain recognized that this was not the "Todd Brendan Fahey known unto Todd Brendan Fahey," and I began to experience The Fear. I had no control whatsoever over that which it was I was doing. I was like a marionette puppet. And it was apparent to me then (this has happened on at least four other occasions that I can remember; the weirdest thing was, I remember doing this same thing, or having this same thing done unto me while as a child) that an electromagnetic pulse were being utilized from space (or from a spook-van in the parking lot of my apartment, who knows) to lead me to jump out my livingroom window.
This sounds insane, it is insane, but it happened. I "came to," with some measure of recognition of who I was (in consensus reality), and I resisted whatever it was was possessing me; when I finally regained control of my musculature, I immediately collapsed on the floor, grabbed the phone, and dialed the U.S. Embassy in Seoul, who forwarded me to the State Department, where I inquired of any NSA (National Security Agency) operations over (name of town deleted for security reasons) Korea. I was coherent, composed, and the officer seemed to take me seriously. (He could "neither confirm nor deny," and took down my statement, cordially.)
2003-06-11 17:51 | User Profile
Originally posted by toddbrendanfahey@Jun 11 2003, 13:25 **Foremost, I'm honest. **
Todd Brendan Fahey (http://www.spikemagazine.com/0998todd.htm) ... in a period of increasingly heavy LSD usage for me. I was living in Santa Barbara, CA and had been accepted into the prestigious & ultra-expensive Professional Writing Program at USC for the Master's degree - this after having basically been run out of the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism at Arizona State University for writing "too much like Hunter Thompson." It is important to note that, at that time. (Spring 1988), I had never read Hunter Thompson. Not a word. I'm fairly sure I'd never even heard of him (I've spent many hours on this question and poured over all my old college folders. and there is no evidence at all of my ever encountering his work). I can pinpoint the exact moment that I recall discovering Thompson, and it was not until I bailed ASU in May of' '88 and moved back to Santa Barbara.
Todd Brendan Fahey (http://www.newworlddisorder.ca/issueone/interviews/faheyinterview.html) It all began one day in high school, with a bag of magic mushrooms. Old friends from those days still tell me about "the time Todd Fahey took mushrooms for three-days straight," and came out a different chap. Psychedelics turned on a Satirical component of my being that I didn't know I had, previously. I became a connoisseur of Black Humor after those trips: a voracious reader of Hunter Thompson, Burroughs, Swift, J.P. Donleavy (The Ginger Man), etc....
2003-06-11 18:30 | User Profile
Originally posted by toddbrendanfahey@Jun 11 2003, 13:25 **Foremost, I'm honest...I don't conceal my motives or agendae or past deeds (or misdeeds).
**
[url=http://forum.originaldissent.com/index.php?act=ST&f=22&t=5875&hl=fahey]http://forum.originaldissent.com/index.php...t=5875&hl=fahey[/url]
Todd Brendan Fahey: skemper: For the record, I haven't used LSD or any other drug (other than a few joints in Bangkok, at 8-month intervals, when I visit Thailand) since 1994. So, "drug-addicted" is not the truth at all.
[url=http://www.newworlddisorder.ca/issueone/interviews/faheyinterview.html]http://www.newworlddisorder.ca/issueone/in...yinterview.html[/url]
There was, indeed, a report on my Far Gone Books Web site, which detailed the night in which I phoned the U.S. Department of State (speaking to one "field agent Douglas Connor"), from my apartment in Korea...
This is the first time I've ever written at-length of the episode (the first of them, there were several), and so New World Disorder is getting something of a world-exclusive herein.
First, I will admit to having been that night and on several other occasions under the influence of Ketamine. However, the same circumstances have occured in states of utter sobriety, jerking me out of bed from a sound sleep. So, who can tell?
During the period of November 1990-March 2000, I had been a fixture on a Web site called FreeRepublic.com...
During the aforementioned period, I was hammering away at John McCain (who I knew in my three years as an ultra-Right political operative in Arizona), and whom I view as "the politician most-likely-to-be-the-Manchurian Candidate"). Some of the dirt on McCain to which I am privy--detailed ad nauseum in my "straight-to-Web" autobiography, Hell Bottled Up!: Chronicles of a Late Propaganda Minister-- was aired in live interviews by ABC's Sam Donaldson and in a New York Times article (Michael Frantz, journalist).
It was about that time that, while listening to John Coltrane's Giant Steps, with a headfull of Ketamine...
2003-06-11 19:05 | User Profile
thanks, "weisbrot," for spreading ze word. :)
You're still flogging yr'n own meat here, but I respect the intrepid/dogged way in which you're doing so.
There might be a few gaps in dates (having spoken to researchers and writers over a long period of time on the Web, some interviews of me come out 3 years after the date in which I spoke to the interviewer; witness a State University of New York Press book, which used my Amsterdam "revelation" as 3/5ths its introductions--the subject being Jungian "unified" visionary experiences), whose contents were published 5 years after I'd last spoken to the author.
If I, personally, have screwed up any salient dates, mea culpa. But the dates in question won't be off by more than a couple of years. I usually respond to interviewers as soon as I've received their queries, and I write in a white-heat, that night. This New World Disorder publisher has been tracking me since 1996 or so, since I lived in Louisiana. I don't know at what date I submitted to him the interview you just posted, as we've corresponded dozens of times.
The bottom line still is, though, that I'm "Experienced" writer whose works emphasize the fundamental primacy of the 1st, 2nd, 4th and 10th amendments to the Constitution.
You'd be hard-pressed to find another aficionado of LSD or other psychedelics who was so committed to Jeffersonian anti-federalist thought.
Best, as ever,
TBF
2003-06-11 19:07 | User Profile
During the period of November 1990-March 2000, I had been a fixture on a Web site called FreeRepublic.com... **
Clearly a typo on the interviewer's part. FreeRepublic didn't begin to exist 'til sometime around 1996--that, after RimJob's move from the Prodigy/"WhiteWater" board.
Interviewers do make typos.
2003-06-11 19:35 | User Profile
Originally posted by toddbrendanfahey@Jun 11 2003, 15:05 ** thanks, "weisbrot," **
De nada.
Actually, interview dates have little to do with the salient quotations. Your statements to "Skemper" about your own drug habits are disproved by other statements made by you to interviewers, regardless of when those statements were made.
Additionally, your claims about Hunter Thompson as an influence are also self-contradicted by statements made elsewhere- the fact that these claims may or may not have been made in long-ago interviews is totally irrelevant.
I've read your "works" and, frankly, I'm just not interested in them. I do think this board has highly interesting content, and finding irresponsible and intentionally dishonest content here is disturbing. Association with this type of content is, in my opinion, damaging to this site in the fulfillment of what I understand to be its goals.
Disparaging others while being willfully dishonest is a tactic indulged by those of highly questionable character. Once such an individual ends the practice of lying to his or herself, the practice of lying to others will normally also come to an end. Recognizing and dealing with the reality of addiction is often a first step in this process; once this process is started, the benefits accrue to far more than just the cherished individual.
Consider it a benefit to the community.
2003-06-11 19:42 | User Profile
The moment this thread was posted I was thinking where weisbrot was with his valuable input. :D
2003-06-11 19:43 | User Profile
ho ho...
Well, let me consider myself lucky that you're not Board-master here.
I'll continue posting, as I like, 'til TexasDissident says otherwise. As for my propensity toward DRUG addiction: It's not a secret. But for the 2-pack per day smokers or weekend 6-pack warriors here and everywhere, I'd say: What does it matter?
I don't perform brain surgery. I don't drive a public school-bus. I'm a writer and English teacher, and a good one (on both counts). Couldn't have made it this far, were this not the case.
So take yr Puritanical predilictions and nibble on them, in a silent wood, for 40-days or 4 years, or whatever the ascetic does.
I don't measure you (as you persist in an anonymous "handle" here, w/o benefit of any--assuming you have any--output). The only reason I've responded to any of your posts, here at OD, is that you troll behind me like a small puppy at the heels of its favorite slipper.
Go out and prove yrself, man. Let us know of your byline. Do some deep research. Write a novel. 'cos what you're doing now is following a man who's done so.
2003-06-11 19:54 | User Profile
TBF
I must say I'm puzzled by weisbrot's continued posting of your various interviews and such. I'm not sure what his motive is, except that maybe he thinks he can "shock" people by "exposing" the influence of "drugs" on your work. If that's the case, then this is absurd for him to do, since I think we're all big boys at this forum and we're not going to be easily "shocked."
If anything, your particular drug use is praiseworthy since it yielded forth interesting material down creative writing venues. If only all "drug users" were as responsible and productive and creative as yourself, not to mention right-wing politically minded.
Whether wesibrot finds "discrepancies" in the narratives he quotes seems rather irrelevant, since none of the material in question is exceptionally politically-charged, at least in reference to the sorts of topics that predominate at Original Dissent. I fail to see how literary/creative writing material constitutes a "threat" to the credibility of this board.
2003-06-11 20:03 | User Profile
Paleo:
Can't figure it out, either.
Shee-it, I was a well-known loose cannon in my early 20s in Arizona (as Founder of Students for the John Birch Society, Arizona State University), but that didn't stop a then-current Governor, a former Congressman, retired CIA officer and a former Director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, and several others, from utilizing my strategic services. & it weren't for reasons of blackmail, as I've always been open in my "DRUG"-use.
I think it's really a rift between the Puritanical and the reasonable. This (the Christian-Right v. Jeffersonian-libertarian gulf) is THE FULCRUM upon which America turns. This gulf must needs a healed breach.
My $.02.
2003-06-11 20:14 | User Profile
Octopod:
No knock against Christians. I read the Bible and find great wisdom in it. Whether I adhere to the utter divinity of Jesus or the "inerrancy" of the King James Version of the Bible is another story....
Puritanism bugs me, though: as Evangelical as it usually is. "Those without sin, cast the first stone," etc. :)
& your comments as to nicotine and caffeine are right on. At one time, following the Turks' importation of coffee into Great Britain, the then-King of England made possession/imbibation a criminal offense. Woodrow Wilson and Congress did the same with the Prohibition Act. Neither worked.
Nor will any work against cannabis or LSD or magic mushrooms. & all such laws are utterly hypocritical when barbiturates, "diet pills," anti-hyperactives (Ritalin), yaddayadda, are available for the asking at most MD's offices, and the two biggest-known killers, alcohol and tobacco, can be found over-the-counter for persons 18-21 and over.
Selah.
2003-06-11 20:31 | User Profile
Call me a "libertarian" (well, if you want to start a fight) but I fail to see why LSD and marijuana are illegal and "evil," while alcohol and tobacco are not.
Haven't had a drop in years....no sinister reason, just don't appreciate the particular effects of alcohol. Tried LSD a half-dozen times in the 70s and couldn't handle the duration of the thing....I don't wanna do anything that takes six-seven hours to end - even if it's pleasant! I do enjoy high-end cannabis when I can find it but the bane of my existence .....the stupidest, vilest, most pointlessly destructive habit I have is tobacco. I don't even need to extrapolate scenarios: it will kill me. IS killing me....while doing nothing for me. Neither alters nor augments reality; stimulates zero creativity or even energy. Not one positive aspect to smoking cigarettes: none. Am about to embark on my two dozenth attempt to quit this week....the prior 23 had me jealous of junkies spazzing out in cold-turkey fits. Will die young for sure if one of these attempts doesn't take.
I'm not anti-smoking, though, because I realize that a good idea - even a great idea - given to the hands of the State for enforcement automatically sets dangerous precedents for further expansion of State power. It's a short hop from anti-smoking to anti-gun legislation. The government that gave us Martin Luther King Blvds in every city in America should never, under any circumstances, be encouraged.
But this country's health-care tab would be cut by 80% if I could buy or grow pot legally yet had to 'hook up' with shady characters in furtive locations and risk imprisonment to acquire tobacco.
2003-06-11 20:36 | User Profile
**Couldn't have made it this far, were this not the case.
So take yr Puritanical predilictions and nibble on them, in a silent wood, for 40-days or 4 years, or whatever the ascetic does.**
This leads one to doubt that there are many ascetics who have gone so far as to have "made it" in places such as, say, Korea. Or that they would have found it necessary to do so. But then, I don't know any ascetics.
I'm not sure why this seems to be turning into a referendum on drug use; apparently, using the published quotations of a successful writer is seen as damning to his character. Perhaps the defense of substance abuse is much more important than the examination of character.
I have no problem with any individual using any substance they wish, as long as they are no threat to the safety and health of my own family. In my opinion, widespread addiction to any substance is detrimental to the health of a community- but please note, this is the first time I've mentioned that opinion.
My comments have been confined mostly to the lack of honesty displayed by one individual, in response to his claims to the contrary . That this individual and his supplicants see the republication of his comments as somehow detrimental to that individual should be quite telling.
I do want to note that implying that the repeated use of a powerful anesthetic such as ketamine is somehow "praiseworthy" is naive in the extreme. I don't think that these substances, or the acts of using them, are evil, be it ketamine, marijauana, or dried cow patty. I do think that the chronic use of them is simply stupid. And I think that any individual who refuses to recognize that a psychotic episode brought on by a Schedule II drug is nothing more than a self-administered brush with death is both stupid and dishonest with himself. This brings into question his judgement and powers of reasoning.
Similarly, any individual who willfully lies about his past in published statements brings question on the veracity and usefulness of all his published work. This would seem to be obvious, but then perhaps there is some sort of "topicality" limitation that has been placed on the need for honesty.
2003-06-11 20:40 | User Profile
& there you go. Great response, & 100% American.
You know you're killing yourself with the inhalation of tobacco...yet you persist; and the State "allows" you to do so, 'cos it's (frankly) NONE OF THEIR F*CKING BUSINESS (or, cynically, it is Their Business, as the State receives massive benefits in tobacco use). Either way, you're not harming another soul in smoking, provided you're not blowing the sum-total of yr lung's contents into the face of an unwilling other, at every puff.
Likewise, I did no one harm in my ingestion of 500 hits of LSD between 1984-1996 (the Amsterdam trip). I did lie to my then-wife; and for that, I am sorry. Have repaired the damage between she and I, and she forgives me totally. The most major destruction in this epoch was the lying to myself. I hid my proclivities in a manner which almost cracked me, psychologically. & this proclivity was merely placing a pinch 'tween the cheek'n'gum, and enjoying a 10-hour benefit. I was doing nothing more than the average chewer of Red Man/Skoal/Copenhagen (different drug, same buccal [cheek] membrane action).
& as a writer/teacher, I wasn't doing anything more dangerous (less so) than the average MLB pitcher who goes out on the mound wired on Copenhagen and pitches a 98-mph fastball.
These Puritans... Dunno what's chaffing or bunching-up against their arses.
2003-06-11 20:43 | User Profile
Todd,
Octopod got to make the point first!
Don't see a conflict between Christian believers and Jeffersonian's. That's not to say that there are many who confuse either or both. However, is a Puritan required to abandon their perceived moral standards for the sake of relative behavior?
Understand your position and do not imply that you should have your choise curtailed by legal sanction. However, being in a former hotel business, I sold booze and made money off of its sale, I have experienced the down side of its excessive use. Since it is ultimately a personal choice and the individual bears the responsibility for the consequences of their behavior, folks should be able to 'live' even foolish lifestyles.
The problem is when the costs for such conduct spills over into the public sector.
As you know altered states is a condition I avoid, since dealing with real world current conditions are difficult enough. With that said, a good binge might be just the medicine to cure and fix the "reality" . . . now and then.
If quality control is a valid issue in medicine, shouldn't the same principle apply to other non legal forms of medication? The best argument I would offer you is the risk of unknown origins.
SARTRE :ph34r:
2003-06-11 20:50 | User Profile
SARTRE:
*The problem is when the costs for such conduct spills over into the public sector. *
You won't have to worry about this problem, in my case. I've made little in the U.S. that qualifies me for Social Security. I don't ever expect to be "back in the U.S.A." I'm self-sufficient.
Again, as a writer and Professor of English, what's the harm in such a person's ingesting his drug-of-choice? Wd I condemn any past-writer of a life-long smoking habit ("Yeah..b-but...he was ADDICTED TO NICOTINE!! His wisdom and writerly craft came from DRUGS!!!).
Nonsense.
But that's what a lot of folks do try to foist upon the sheeple.
Or: "Well...he was a great writer, but he was a DRUG ADDICT!!!"
Yes? So? So long as said writer didn't hold the two mutually exclusive, who the f*ck cares?
"weisbrot" is not being forthcoming with his agendae in reposting the many interviews/excerpts of mine. Dunno what his reasoning is; don't care, particularly, other than to post that the 10th amendment guarantees those things not guaranteed to FedGov be controlled by the various States (and, if not by the states, to the counties or to the citizens). FedGov has 0.00 business in DRUG CONTROL.
Responses?
2003-06-11 20:53 | User Profile
H.L. Mencken complimented the Roman Catholic church as a sophisticated, wise and mature institution for denying its adherents ecclesiastical authority to read the Old Testament. Edward Gibbon made fun of that work and denied Jews claim to the blessings of Divine Providence. Yet it is beautiful English, and if it were up to me, I would make students read the whole thing. I can accept that as ever the brighter and more inquisitive students will have severe doubts towards any claims of the Chosen people, but I hope it would suffice to being a start towards reading more honest and intelligent works.
il ragno
Haven't had a drop in years....no sinister reason, just don't appreciate the particular effects of alcohol. Tried LSD a half-dozen times in the 70s and couldn't handle the duration of the thing....I don't wanna do anything that takes six-seven hours to end - even if it's pleasant! I do enjoy high-end cannabis when I can find it but the bane of my existence .....the stupidest, vilest, most pointlessly destructive habit I have is tobacco. I don't even need to extrapolate scenarios: it will kill me. IS killing me.... Like yourself I no longer drink, but I stopped because it was killing me. I smoked Pall Mall (big reds) for almost 30 years with 20 of them being two packs a day. If I can quit (14 years), anyone can. Good Luck.
2003-06-11 21:05 | User Profile
Appreciate the thumbs-up, Mr E.
2003-06-11 21:23 | User Profile
*Now I went out last Sunday with my little Mary-Ann She said please stay 'til Monday, and grabbed me by my can She laid a big one on me, surprised me with her tongue But her surprise was waitin' there, between my cheek and gum.
Copenhagen, what a wad of flavor. Copenhagen, you can see it in my smile. Copenhagen, do yourself a favor. Chew Copenhagen, drive them pretty girls wild.
So I went to the movies with my little Peggy-Sue, I had my dip there in my lip just like I always do. She didn't know that I was spittin' in my Coca-Cola cup, She took a great big swoller' and threw her popcorn up!
Copenhagen, what a wad of flavor. Copenhagen, you can see it in my smile. Copenhagen, do yourself a favor. Chew Copenhagen, drive them pretty girls wild.
The moral of this story is so very sad but true. If you stay 'til breakfast friend, they'll want to marry you. So try my little method and I promise you no doubt Dip some Copenhagen if you want to snuff 'em out.
Copenhagen, what a wad of flavor. Copenhagen, you can see it in my smile. Copenhagen, do yourself a favor. Chew Copenhagen, drive them pretty girls wild.*
2003-06-11 22:41 | User Profile
Originally posted by Texas Dissident@Jun 11 2003, 17:23 ** So I went to the movies with my little Peggy-Sue, I had my dip there in my lip just like I always do. She didn't know that I was spittin' in my Coca-Cola cup, She took a great big swoller' and threw her popcorn up! **
Now that is nasty! :lol:
2003-06-11 23:02 | User Profile
Todd,
Sure you are an exception (which applies to much more than responsible pharmaceutical use); however, the underlying issue goes well beyond any form of governmental regulation or prohibition.
The essential question is does any form of substance enhance your well being? Each should ask that question and answer according to their own self worth.
SARTRE :ph34r:
2003-06-12 01:51 | User Profile
As I see my post from liberty forum is over here, I figured its time I join the rest of the whores and scoundrels from there over here. I hope I haven't missed much. For now I will be lurking, I hate to comment with a narrow veiw of things. seems to be a major problem with most forums so I won't add to it.
2003-06-12 01:55 | User Profile
*Originally posted by Patriot@Jun 11 2003, 21:51 * ** As I see my post from liberty forum is over here, I figured its time I join the rest of the whores and scoundrels from there over here. I hope I haven't missed much. For now I will be lurking, I hate to comment with a narrow veiw of things. seems to be a major problem with most forums so I won't add to it. **
Too late, since you just posted a rather "narrow" view of forums...so now you're stuck with us mere mortals in this vicious cycle....
Welcome aboard!
2003-06-12 07:30 | User Profile
*Originally posted by Patriot@Jun 12 2003, 01:51 * ** As I see my post from liberty forum is over here, I figured its time I join the rest of the whores and scoundrels from there over here. I hope I haven't missed much. For now I will be lurking, I hate to comment with a narrow veiw of things. seems to be a major problem with most forums so I won't add to it. **
Admit it Patriot. You were really only here for Todd's bod :lol: