Entertainment Recommendations

For your viewing pleasure:

I just finished tearing through the complete BBC series Life on Mars (2 seasons of 8 hour-long episodes each, 2006-07). Starring John Simm of Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz fame, it's the story of a cop that gets hit by a car and sent into a coma, yet (at least in his mind) he finds himself as a cop newly assigned to his same department, but in 1973. It's a fucking incredible series and I can't recommend it enough. There's a new version of it now on American TV which apparently blows, and I doubt I'll be watching it.

This was a ton of viewing for me, right when I was also zipping through a recent Sci Fi channel mini-series called The Lost Room. About 5-6 hours running time in all, and it's a fantastic trip. Peter Krause stars, along with Sydney Pollack and Julienne Marguiles (sp?) as a cop that discovers a key at a crime scene. It turns out to fit any lock, but whatever door you're opening with it will open into a deserted motel room. Again, wicked recommended.

OMFG, I might just vote for McCain!

It's a McMiracle! (hey, CNN's word, not mine)

Here's a cheery story on CNN's site about a guy who lost 80 pounds in 6 months on "The McDonalds Diet." I shit you not. The interviewer happily went over his daily menu with him in detail, both of them describing what's in them, and clearly impressed by their deliciousness. The CNN "news" person even mentioned off-hand that one of the items included an option (grilled vs. ... whatever else), though the dieter didn't go that way.

Sometimes, our guy would or wouldn't take the mid-day snack of Apple Dippers, which the CNN lady described for the viewers that didn't know, as being slices of apple; probably only about half an apple.

Also on the topic of apples, apparently the Walnut Salad he sometimes had at dinner is just a little cup of fruit, which has grapes, walnuts, and again, apples.

The background image for the text on the screen was mostly abstract, but gave the feeling of a sunrise or sunset, a nice orange glow. Inserted into this was a somewhat opaque version of the McDonalds' M logo and the words 'I'm lovin.'

Our man hasn't been in contact with McDonalds, but if he gets any support from McDonalds, it's for the Wounded Warrior Project, a charity he's working with (I looked it up online, and it seems like a great charity). And we also know that our hero - and they displayed this info when introducing him - he's a VP of some company (it's all initials, no idea what it is or does), and that he never graduated from college.

So why'd he do it? Somehow, it all began with that Wounded Warrior Project. He told his wife he was going to finally lose a ton of weight, and because she didn't believe him, he decided to come up with the "craziest idea I could think of at that moment."

This... news item? is so far gone, and so surreal, that I'm not sure how to even begin. There was no explanation, btw, as to how or why McDonalds was somehow supporting this extremely troop-supportive charity he's involved with... the only link was that he engaged in this absurd diet. And that he's on CNN, which is apparently now sponsored by the letter M and the word lovin'.

I love that he's successful, and never graduated from college. And ate solely at McDonalds. Are you like him, at least in the categories of non-graduate, patriotic, and fat? Keep on it! He's a vice president! And he's on CNN!

Wait... I never graduated college, I'm fat, and I'm supportive of our troops! All I need now is to start eating at McD's and I'll be successful and maybe even famous!

BTW, he has no plans to continue eating the "McDiet." He'll be eating healthy meals at home, but says that if he backslides, he'll go back to "what works," as in, the McMiracle McDiet at McDonalds. This is McCNN reporting.

Starbuck says... "YOU MOTHERFRAKKER!!!"

Just watched the "mid-season finale" of Battlestar Galactica... all I can say is WOW. WOW WOW WOW FRAKKIN' WOW. WOW.

If you don't watch BG, you should. Even if you're not interested in science fiction, etc. It's just a brilliantly written, well-acted show. Easily the best sci fi show in years, and some would argue, ever.

Why? is a useless question at this point.

When I read this on CNN's front page just now:

Bomber hits as Iraqis celebrate soccer win
A bomber detonated her suicide vest Saturday in a marketplace in Diyala province, targeting soccer fans who had just watched the Iraqi national team win a big match against China, authorities told CNN.

without even thinking about it, I put my head in my hands and whimpered "Nooooooo...." My response struck me as perhaps melodramatic, but, there it was nonetheless.

It's odd and maybe interesting to me, that this stands out as being one of my most immediate reactions to any of the shitty news coming out from Iraq in a long time. It's like... people get to enjoy a simple pleasure during all of this chaos, this Hell, and then some poor, misguided person is so far gone as to think that doing this will mean something. Instead, it's a perfect example of how meaningless life, reason, reality, has become for some of these people. Senselessness makes sense, I guess. Fuck.

It mah kitteh!

In happy news: a pic of mine made it onto LOLcats' front page, woot! It's someone else's caption, but hey. Kittehs!

Radioactive Man

From Inter Press service, via Common Dreams (which everyone should always read):

‘Special Weapons’ Have a Fallout on Babies

FALLUJAH - Babies born in Fallujah are showing illnesses and deformities on a scale never seen before, doctors and residents say.

The new cases, and the number of deaths among children, have risen after “special weaponry” was used in the two massive bombing campaigns in Fallujah in 2004.

After denying it at first, the Pentagon admitted in November 2005 that white phosphorous, a restricted incendiary weapon, was used a year earlier in Fallujah.

In addition, depleted uranium (DU) munitions, which contain low-level radioactive waste, were used heavily in Fallujah. The Pentagon admits to having used 1,200 tonnes of DU in Iraq thus far.

Many doctors believe DU to be the cause of a severe increase in the incidence of cancer in Iraq, as well as among U.S. veterans who served in the 1991 Gulf War and through the current occupation.

“We saw all the colours of the rainbow coming out of the exploding American shells and missiles,” Ali Sarhan, a 50-year-old teacher who lived through the two U.S. sieges of 2004 told IPS. “I saw bodies that turned into bones and coal right after they were exposed to bombs that we learned later to be phosphorus.

"We" have actually been dropping depleted uranium bombs ever since the Gulf War, and not just during it, and during these past years. All through the 90s these munitions were being dumped in payloads by our forces. The worst of the effects had been felt in the Basra area, which was the main area of activity in the original war. Before this war even started, people there had been dealing with a massive increase in cancer, to a point where 40% of the population was plagued by it. Deformities in newborns were common.

Some people consider the "Gulf War syndrome" that so many of our military experienced was a result of the DU munitions used (in addition to such factors as post-traumatic stress disorder, which will make any condition worse). I'd be really interested to see a study regarding women that served on the ground in Basra back then, and if they experienced particular difficulties when giving birth, or if there were deformities in their children. And in general, the cancer rate for those that served in the area at that time.

Of course, the radiation issued from the remains of the munitions will never go away... it's there to stay. Just like freedom!

---

Ah! I just looked up DU on Wiki, and it actually addresses the lasting effects of DU on US military: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Depleted_uranium#Gulf_War_syndrome_and_soldier_complaints

Kitteh!

So, a while ago I made up some lolcats using old kitteh photos, but I think lol-speak just doesn't come naturally to me. In any event, they used none of them, but if you go to my pet gallery you'll see all six of them. This may be more adorable if you knew the kittehs pictured.

The New Captain America is... Stephen Colbert!

When Captain America died, the only one that could have replaced him was his old pal, Bucky. But then, I considered Stephen Colbert, and realized that when they kill off Bucky, he should be able to step in to the winghead's uniform just fine.



This would have been more clever if I'd designed and posted it when Cap died. Hey, I'm slow.

(Apologies and love to the incredible artist Alex Ross for using/abusing his painting.)

And more buttons...

Button frenzy! See my Buttons Gallery for my collection, and larger images.

New Buttonses

Here's a flurry of new buttons I've made - see my buttons gallery for bigger images and more buttons. If you want one, let me know. I also take requests for new designs!

Dear big O

The following is a letter I've actually sent (in email and by POST, if you can imagine) to Obama's campaign.

To: Senator Barack Obama and/or his campaign staff

From: Phobrek Taz, Worcester, Massachusetts

Date: June 4^th, 2008

NOTES:

I’m not actually crazy about boldfacing text, but I do it here to highlight the more important notes. Basically, if something isn’t boldfaced, someone wishing to skip over all my blather can just ignore it. Even though my writing and thoughts are simply a treasure to behold.

I imagine Senator Obama won’t be reading this himself, so if whoever’s reading this could add my name or vote (so to speak) on your tallies of comments that people make in such letters, I’d appreciate it.

Dear Senator Obama,

Congratulations! I’ve been rooting for you, and desperately want you to become the next president of the United States. And thank you – to you and all the people involved – for running a campaign that has genuinely inspired and excited people, unlike any other in my lifetime (I’m 38).

You’ve been my clear favorite over Hillary Clinton, and while so many felt she should have conceded, I’m actually content that she stayed in it. Somehow, for once, voters in every state actually got to have a say in these primaries (I think the Michigan/Florida debacle was handled as well as was possible). I think that this should be a talking point:

I’m glad we saw this process through to the end. To many, this process may seem unfair… in its scheduling of all of our states - and territories - causing them to have more – or less – impact on the results; and for the earlier states being able to create a perceived trend, that may feel limiting to those that come later. In 2004, the latter TWENTY-SIX primaries became largely moot, as candidate Senator Kerry became the presumptive nominee just after “Super Tuesday,” March 2nd. But this year, every state counted, even after the controversy surrounding Michigan and Florida, because: Senator Hillary Clinton stayed in the race, despite the badgering of the media, and the pundits… and she gave the people in every state and every territory the opportunity to have their vote counted… to have it mean something.

The important ideas here are:

To get people to understand that you desire due equity for all, regardless of their candidate, location, even their party. Right now, being inclusive is vital. You want absolutely everyone on board your train.

To, likewise, reach out to the Hillary supporters in particular, in a way even congratulating them, and her, for having the strength of will to never give up, and to make the full primary process mean something. People (understandably) love it when you tell them that they did the right thing, resisting the media’s demands that they do otherwise.

The most important thing of all, in my opinion, is to reconcile w/Hillary and her supporters. One way to do this is to return her support: as everyone knows, she will now do her duty by supporting the Democratic candidate, but this doesn’t mean that it can’t go two ways. This talking point would be especially useful if you do not choose her as your running mate. Talking point:

I know that this is easier to say, now that this process is over, but while I know Senator Clinton will be supportive of myself and our party’s campaign for the presidency, that doesn’t mean that the support needn’t go both ways. Senator Clinton is (insert compliments here). Her interests, her perspectives, are clearly shared by half of those who voted in our primaries, and her (and our other candidates’) causes must also be supported, and adopted, and reflected as well as possible, in our campaign, and in our future administration. To not do so, would be to deny so many of our supporters a continued meaning to the votes that they have cast in these past few months. These voices must continue to be heard, and heeded, for to not do so would disempower, and disenfranchise, our own people.

This kind of talking point would be something to use when you announce your Veep. If it’s Hillary, you’d use it to lead up to your announcement; if you pick someone else, you’d make a point of saying this afterward. Not on that same day, but very soon afterward.

However, I actually think that you should choose to take on Hillary as the Veep. I didn’t think this for the longest time, because I felt like you shouldn’t have to, just because so many are suggesting it, and I personally believe that she’s been somewhat “co-opted” in her eight years since leaving the White House. A specific example is that she was such a champion of health care reform as First Lady, and then ended up having to succumb to the industry in order to get elected. She had to play ball. I don’t particularly blame her, as this is how government usually works. She could either play ball and get elected, or not get elected at all (not just because of this one example, but because of the overall, corrupt process).

You, however, have been more able to maintain your integrity, and you haven’t had nearly as much time to become tainted by this process either; and people know it. I’m sure it’s been tried, to push you into undesired directions, and I am sure that these influences will continue to try to manipulate you and everyone else in government, forevermore. It’s a sad part of the process. But you are our best hope of operating against that machine.

That said, lately I’ve come to believe that you actually should pick up Hillary as Veep. I’m very wary of both her and Bubba, but if they can be reined in, they could be very important in getting things done. They’ve got clout.

But much more importantly: in the end, even after you became the presumptive-presumptive-nominee, Hillary supporters were still coming out in droves, down to the very last primaries. That’s incredible. The upshot is: half of the party and its voters are passionate about getting her into the White House. Not a small chunk; not a third; HALF. They will not be easily appeased.

So many have said that if their candidate didn’t get the nomination, they’d either vote Republican, or not at all. This of course is bullshit, most of the time. When a candidate is still very much in the running, most supporters will make this silly ultimatum in an (ineffective) attempt at coercing others into switching sides. Regardless, they don’t want to say anything that suggests that their candidate will lose. If they don’t end up backing the Democratic candidate for the presidency, they’re either mentally disaffected, or are actually Republicans (same thing).

But in the end, there is only one vital thing that must happen: there must not be a Republican in the White House. That has got to be the primary goal; everything else is of secondary importance. Taking on Hillary as Veep is the one move that will give you a huge increase in your chances of winning. To not do this is to risk losing a lot of votes. Hillary truly does attract voters of specific demographics, different from yours, in large numbers. These people often seem like more conservative voters than you and your supporters (so I believe), and they really are the ones that might possibly end up voting for McCain. That cannot happen.

Besides appealing to the needed demographics, the Clintons (as a pair) do have their legacy. To some (myself included) that legacy isn’t necessarily very appealing, but everything is relative. The facts are: the Clinton Era came right before this tragic, devastating eight years of Bush tossing our country (and others) into the proverbial shitter. There is an attraction to returning to better times, to undoing these eight years, and the Clinton Era is connected to that for many people. Bush has driven every aspect of the United States into the ground, after inheriting what people see as being the (tainted but forgivable) Clinton legacy (whether they realize they see it as this or not). Taking on Hillary will give comfort to those that fared better (read: almost everyone) before this current administration took over, while you – at the helm – will still clearly signal a brand new day that will build off of a recognizable, perhaps even nostalgic, foundation.

Last, but important nonetheless, and also in the name of inclusion: so many people have remarked that this year’s field of candidates for the Democratic nomination has been a surprisingly excellent collection of people. While people have only been supporting you or Hillary for the last few weeks, there were others who received support and represent voters’ interests. Most people that support other candidates end up not voting for them, because the candidate’s status of “unelectable” means that they’re throwing their vote away. You are my choice of candidate, but my first choice would have been Dennis Kucinich, who has some notably different positions. Many people end up wishing their favorite candidate, or a particular platform plank, would be included in the plans and directives of the eventual nominee, and they are far greater than the number of votes reflected as the amount actually cast for these “unelectables.”

Based on this thinking, I think it would be wise to give real consideration to using one or more of these candidates in your administration, whether it be an appropriate cabinet position, or something else of a substantial nature. If you found that using a previous candidate was appropriate for one position or another, that would be another excellent move of inclusion. For instance, Bill Richardson would make an excellent Secretary of State, in my opinion. Besides exciting his supporters, such an appointment would also appeal to those who like him and his ideas, and his general demographic support, even though they ended up voting for and/or supporting some other candidate. I know many people that are big fans of both Richardson and Kucinich, who ended up voting for you over Hillary, even before it fell down to just the two of you.

Besides the appeal to various supporters, there plainly are some excellent people in that original field of candidates, that would be appropriate for positions even if they’d never been a part of the primaries. One other factor: people know these candidates. They’ve been all over TV, during their campaigns as well as the endless debates. The public likes being able to identify and understand the top people in the administration; I think that the public is developing an increasing recognition of the other major players, mostly meaning the main cabinet/advisors, UN ambassador, etc. Using such a person to occupy a space in your administration will increase inclusion (obviously, this has become my mantra), and show that their perspectives and causes are being sincerely represented for them at the highest levels. Obviously, there are other well-known players that would be popular and appreciated at various posts: an example that most easily comes to mind is the fantastic Richard Clarke, for instance.

I’ve only ever written a couple of letters to politicians – my senators, Kennedy and Kerry – but today, I have been so driven to write this letter, even knowing it will probably not make its way into the thinking of you or your campaign. But if it does, then this is the most important letter I’ve ever written. And I thank whomever for actually reading my long-winded notes.

Yours truly,

Phobrek Taz

Worcester, Massachusetts

Thou art a soiled condom, sir!

Slick Willie done apologized for calling some asshole reporter (actually, editor) a "scumbag." He's got to walk on eggshells to avoid screwing his wife... 's campaign, but man, show some balls. Do they all have to apologize anytime they say something that might make Grandma frown? For reference:

The article, by Vanity Fair magazine's national editor Todd Purdum, suggested that Bill Clinton's personality had changed since his 2004 heart bypass surgery and said that there were reports of Clinton "seeing a lot of women on the road." - CNN

If that indeed was the charge laid out by this guy, then sure, he's a fucking scumbag. I don't think people really equate the word with its original meaning (a used condom), do they? Maybe I'm wrong. If so, then yeah, apologize for the image, but my understanding is that it's just taken as a general insult these days. Am I wrong?

Meh. Meanwhile, reports are up and down on the idea of Hillary wanting the Veep position. I hope Obamarama resists the urge. After all, I've already decreed that he should take Dennis along for the ride. Kucinich 2016! Kucinich 2016! His wife will still be hot.

Quote of the Day

Regarding his very distant blood relationship to Barack Obama, our beloved Creepy Veep Dick Cheney said that the Cheney line on his father's side of the family dates to 1630's, and a Cheney family line on his mother's side dates to the 1650's.

Thus:

"So, I had Cheneys on both sides of the family — and we don't even live in West Virginia," Cheney cracked. After pausing for laughter from the crowd, Cheney added, "You can say those things when you're not running for re-election."

As the CNN item detailing this adds:

Afterward, West Virginia Sen. Robert Byrd lashed out at Cheney for the "insult to all Americans." In a written statement, Byrd declared that Cheney showed "contempt and astounding ignorance toward his own countrymen" with the comments.

Sadly, that weird old Byrd just went into the hospital tonight. Damn. First Our (drunken) Man Ted, now the aged one (I had no idea he was 3rd in line to the presidency... can you fucking imagine?). If Kennedy has to retire, we're pretty safe (but not completely) with his replacement being a Democrat. But for Byrd in West Virginia?

On the Daily Show, they interviewed some random W Virginians on the day of their primary, asking why people weren't voting for Obama. Those made for some other great quotes (paraphrasing here): "I ain't votin' for no Muslim," and "his middle name's Hussein... I had enough'a Husseins."

Mind-boggling Article of the Day

From Common Dreams: http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2008/06/02/9373/

60 Minutes: Pentagon’s Raygun Demonstrated on Mock Protesters

by David Edwards and Muriel Kane

The Pentagon has been developing a raygun which can harmlessly repel enemies by causing a burning sensation in the top layer of the skin. However, according to CBS’s 60 Minutes, the military is unwilling to actually trust this weapon enough to deploy it in Iraq.

“We are now stepping into the Buck Rogers scenario,” explained Colonel Kirk Hymes, who is in charge of testing the “Active Denial System” at Moody Air Force Base in Georgia.

Hymes demonstrated the weapon by staging what CBS somewhat oddly called “a scenario soldiers might encounter in Iraq” — a handful of military volunteers, dressed as civilian protesters, who carried signs saying “peace not war” and threw objects at a small group of soldiers. A series of raygun blasts from half a mile away disrupted their chants and finally sent them running.

Assistant Secretary of the Air Force for Acquisiton Sue Payton calls the Active Denial System a “huge game-changer” which “would save huge numbers of lives.” She told CBS, “It could be used to read someone’s mind, in effect. … If they continue to come at you, then you’re fairly sure … they’re probably a terrorist or an adversary who wants to do you harm.”

(skipping a paragraph)

However, the failure to deploy the weapon as planned has raised suspicions that the real intention is to use it for domestic crowd control.

In 2006, Air Force Secretary Michael Wynne was quoted as saying that the device should be used first on Americans, because “if we’re not willing to use it here against our fellow citizens, then we should not be willing to use it in a wartime situation. … If I hit somebody with a nonlethal weapon and they claim that it injured them in a way that was not intended, I think that I would be vilified in the world press.”

All together now:

WTF

Here's a brief article on the protection of uncontacted peoples: http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2008/05/30/9303/

It begins:

These remarkable pictures of Envira Indians were taken by Brazilian government officials during several flights over a remote part of Brazil’s Acre state.

Painted a bright orange, two members of the tribe emerged from their huts to threaten the helicopter as it flew low over their small village.

Others could be seen in the background, apparently startled by the presence of the noisy machine in their skies.

“We did the over-flight to show their houses, to show they are there, to show they exist,’ said Jose Carlos dos Reis Meirelles, an expert on “uncontacted” tribes, who works for the Brazilian government’s Indian affairs department.

“This is very important because there are some who doubt their existence.”

---

I agree that it's important to prove their existence. But I have to ask... if you fly a chopper over these people, are they not being contacted? It's the old notion that if you're trying only to observe a situation in a disconnected manner, you're still interacting with and affecting it. "Uncontacted" doesn't mean that the people have never been contacted whatsoever, but I'm just imagining these people racing out of their huts to find this terrifying monster swooping down upon them from the sky. They have probably encountered outsiders at some point in the past, but I think it's likely that such visitors would have been on foot to get to what must be rather remote areas. I'd love to know what effect such an event would have on these people, though. D'oh.

Have I mentioned that I hate Windows Vista? Let me tell you why: first, th-



[This post has been edited by Windows Vista.]

teh

This morning I woke up w/cum all over my face. DAMN YOU WINDOWS VISTA!!!

I dair U 2 nock this canddiateoff mi sholder LOLOLLOLL!!!1

Yay Hillary! Keep going, girl. By my calculations, if you beat Obama 60-40% in the last few primaries, you can almost beat him! You done did it before - in New York, Arkansas, and American Samoa - you can do it six more times! And then maybe the super'gates can drag you across the finish line. Especially if they have extra primaries in those three states... uhm, places. NM.

Is it my imagination, or do the pictures of Hillary in the past few days have her smiling in a way that opens her mouth to an inhuman extent? Nice tonsils, babe!

LSD

Dr. Hofmann has left the box for good this time... the inventor of LSD died last week, and this article makes an admirable attempt at explaining what he'd unleashed. Having done a lot of acid in my life, I think his take is as good an encapsulation as you'll see. It's otherwise kind of frustrating trying to relate the experience to someone who's never taken it.

Yawp.

Originally published in the (London) Independent:

A Tribute To Albert Hofmann: My LSD Trip Down Memory Lane
by Tim Lott

Dr Albert Hofmann, who died last week, was the inventor of LSD. But he was not merely a chemist. He was a revolutionary.

Hofmann changed the way a whole generation looked at the world. This is the sort of statement that is customarily made about thinkers and scientists of the stature of, say, Marx or Einstein. But it is more directly and vividly true of Hofmann than any of these otherwise much more formidable intellectual titans. Freud theorised about the existence of the unconscious, but LSD made it an experiential reality, as tangible as touching stone or seeing light.

Hofmann’s discovery is still widely misunderstood. But those who have known its glory - and its agony - will also know that no one really comes back from the altered state of consciousness that LSD induces quite the same person that they were before. Like no other experience imaginable, it rips to pieces your understanding of what it is to be alive.

When you return from the unimaginable shore to which LSD takes you, putting those pieces back together can be a lifelong task. It can make you mad. But it can also make you understand that your life is not what you thought it was - that it is bigger, richer and, above all, stranger.

This epiphany-in-a-pill is an idea that makes us deeply uncomfortable for a raft of reasons - the lack of spiritual or moral effort involved in attaining the experience, the impossibility of explaining its effects to non-users, and the moral panic over its distribution and use in the 1960s and 1970s.

Nowadays, LSD has been quietly consigned to the medicine cabinet of history. It is no longer fashionable, nor widely available, nor especially potent. It has lost ground to gentler drugs such as MDMA or more violent narcotics such a crack, crystal meth and heroin. But it is in a different category from all these mind-altering substances, and ill deserves its lumping into the category of “recreational drugs: bad/harmful/dangerous”.

This isn’t to say it isn’t bad, harmful or dangerous. LSD can certainly be all those things. But LSD - like its natural counterparts mescaline or peyote - is not quite in the same category as any other mind-altering narcotic. It is potentially, I think, the only truly creative drug - that is, a drug which enables the mind to shake off the shackles of habit and conditioning and arrive at the heart of - for want of a better word - the human soul.

And it is the only “recreational” drug that has a real element of intellectual and cultural respectability, with thinkers and writers such as Aldous Huxley, Ken Kesey and Allen Ginsberg all affirming its uses, while the remarkable phenomenon we call “the Sixties” would not have happened at all without this psychoactive shamanic medicine.

Before I continue, I should make it clear that I am not a habitual or long-term user of the drug. I have taken it twice - both times when I was 15 years old. On one occasion, it gave me an experience of bliss, lasting some 12 hours, that lay far beyond words or images to express. On the other, I was cast into the darkest reaches of hopelessness and terror. I ended up running down my street naked, and being locked up in a police cell. It is not an exaggeration to say that these experiences, to this day, are always with me.

This will sound like hyperbole to anyone who hasn’t experienced the drug, so I will make an effort to explain what it was like, knowing that such an effort must fail. I wrote about it in my memoir, The Scent of Dried Roses. Here are two brief extracts:

“The tower blocks shine like mirrors and the blue of the sky seems to have concentrated and leaked out into the air, so that everything is soaked in aquamarine. There is a deep relentless and secret whirr within me, a dynamo that has been switched on to full power for the first time. I am so full of delight I want to leave my skin and melt.”

Then later:

“The panic begins to turn to unalloyed terror as I feel my very sense of self beginning to collapse into the swelling chaos of everything else… I am negated. I have gone completely mad, although everything is unmistakable, intensely real.”

The key fact of these accounts is that, whether in terror or bliss, “I am not seeing things that are not there. I am seeing things that are there…. The sensible world is merely a construction of my brain, and the brain is simply a filter that keeps unmanageable, too large information out.” LSD does not merely distort reality - it removes a filter on reality. And that is why it is such a profound experience.

I cannot in all conscience evangelise, or recommend to my children that they take it. I have suffered mental health problems much of my life - I doubt this fact is entirely unconnected with those very intense teenage mental epiphanies. But I cannot help but be grateful to have seen what I have seen, which is plainly and simply a religious vision, an a priori proof that there is more to the world than a dead material universe.

My personal experience aside, it fuelled decades of cultural experiment and output, much of it bad, but some of it good. (After Sir Paul McCartney claimed that “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds” had nothing to do with LSD, I’m surprised the judge in his divorce case believed a word he uttered in court.) But the larger societal “effect” ‘ of LSD - be it in swirly-whirly graffiti, self-indulgent rock music, or tie-dye T-shirts - are a red herring, along with the appallingly dim-witted New Age movements it has left in its wake.

The art, culture and film that arose out of LSD did not have much worth - Zabriskie Point? Disraeli Gears? Journey to Ixtlan? and so on - but the fact that people took the intellectual experience of the drug seriously does speak volumes. There were even TV documentaries - one chaired by Malcolm Muggeridge - on which philosophers and academics were given the drug and filmed on camera. They spoke very highly of their experiences. LSD, they asserted, didn’t simply damage people; it changed them in ways that went beyond “good” or “bad”. This is its unique claim within the pharmacological lexicon.

Such a thing happening today is unimaginable. We live now in a world where all illegal drugs are lumped together as social evils. This represents a narrowing of our imaginations, a closing of our collective minds. Albert Hofmann’s discovery remains, I believe, of the greatest significance; and there are few mature adults - particular ones whose minds are limited by the environment in which they habitually exist - who would not benefit greatly from its prescription.

Gordon Brown would be a prime contender, I think. His dour materialism would disappear overnight. Boris Johnson has clearly had some already slipped to him in a cup of tea some time or other. But apart from him, the entire Tory and Labour front benches could do with at least one medically administered shot of acid.

That something which bio-chemically can open and even heal the mind (in some ways Prozac does something analogous though very different) is so violently proscribed speaks volumes of our times, when imagination and the spiritual itself are virtually taboo. Albert Hofmann’s great experiment was thus a failure. But one day, I still believe, both its therapeutic and philosophical uses will be rediscovered.

And one other thing. Old Albert lived to 102. What does that tell you about the therapeutic properties of lysergic acid diethylamide?