A few years ago I used to opine that those faux-daredevil shows like “Fear Factor” were only interesting to see the gross (but undangerous) things people would do for small amounts of cash - and I joked that they’d only really be good when the people were actually in danger. Sure, it’s sickly fun to watch a cute 19 year old girl in a cutoff t-shirt struggle to eat a dozen plump, fresh bull testicles - but hardly is there any real risk involved. Those shows need real stakes, I thought.

However, having been exposed to FOX’s “Moment of Truth” show tonight, I see that we’re there, and in a much more tragic way than I had imagined. Read the rest of this entry »

Some folks at the Bexar County Sheriff’s Office have a very different view of the law than I do, and this “accidental interview” should demonstrate those differences rather clearly. We’ve all heard the myths about Texas lawmen and their, errr.. improvisational legislative interpretations. I’m sure one Lieutenant Phillip Dreyer doesn’t take much shame in this myth - in fact, he seems to be doing his best to live up to that stereotype. But I’m getting ahead of myself, kids … first, despite several weeks passing since the incident, my notes were taken that evening. So, I believe the below to be a very accurate and fair encapsulation.

On the night of Feburary 5, 2007, while walking around San Antonio to get some night shots, I noted the rather cool way one of the canals was being lit on East Nueva Street, so decided to take some pictures of it.
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For someone who doesn’t believe in God, I think about God a lot.

Exploring Texas, where megachurches are more common than oil wells (and probably more profitable), lately it’s made my mind itch a little more than usual. I was raised a Pentecostal Christian, and these places remind me of the intellectual darkness I experienced inside the stifling walls of organized religion. That a hundred million of my fellow Americans believe these buildings are their best gateway to the Ultimate is heartbreaking indeed.
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First of all, this train scene is bullshit. The compartments are evenly divided among smoking and non-smoking, which I think is unfair. One could be forgiven for thinking that all Europeans smoke, because there seems to be smoking just about everywhere. I saw folks smoking in a sushi restaurant in Amsterdam and remember thinking, how can you taste the sushi?

Anyway, I choose a smoking compartment because the non-smoking compartments are stuffed full, and I’m hoping to spread out and get some writing done. I am listening to my iPod as I settle in.
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Last night, i decided I would take a train to Budapest in the morning. The plan was to get up early and check the train schedules online. My hotel was one of the very few who offered free Internet access in my hotel room, a nice luxury. But of course when i awoke, the Internet access was down. Oh well, I’ll give it a little time… took a shower, went downstairs for breakfast, and returned to my room to prepare for check-out. Tried the ‘net again, no deal.
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After some inner debate, I decided to take a day trip from Vienna into Bratislava, Slovakia. It would be my first time behind the old “iron curtain,” and I was excited. I took a mid-day train out of Vienna and as we went along I decided to try to snap a few photos out the train window. It’s basically impossible to shoot a decent photograph through a train window because of the interior reflections, but this train had upper windows that slid down. Since there was no one near me who would be bothered by it, I slid the window down and began gawking out and snapped a couple of shots.
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After agonizing whether to head south to Milan or east to Vienna, I decided to head east. I took the ICE (inter-city express; a high-speed train) from Amsterdam to Duisburg, then connected from Duisburg to an overnight train for Vienna. I was dreading it but wanted the experience.
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Had she been warmer, I might not have left.

She, who had somehow trained her girls to run, on cobblestone, in heels, and look great doing so. She, who brought a type of Scandic modernness together with a thousand years of history and made it look like it belonged together. She who, despite being a bit rough with me, had finally whispered - no, sung - into my ear what I’d been aching to hear: that I could stay as long as I wanted. But, she and I had to say good-bye.

It was a summer-vacation kind of love; you know, the love under whose light anything seems possible - infinity visible again in the everyday - even swirling around right there in your coffee cup. The kind that can take all the dreams that long ago rusted away under the rain of your own mediocrity and make them shine again. Or - was that just me, more awake?

And likewise, it was an end-of-summer-vacation good-bye; just like that girl who hugged me before she got into her parents’ station wagon to head home for school, I told her we’d see each other again soon. We’d stay in touch - somehow be together again, I said - and then felt the heartache as she faded off into a darkening sky. But later would come new friends, new adventures, and so on - and before you know it, that rain kicks in and you start to forget…

I woke up in my Brussels room five minutes before the alarm went off, with a nasty feeling of head congestion that felt like I could barely breathe. As I got up and about it dissipated, and I hope the blame can be laid on the air in the room rather than some developing malady.

Since I want to be in Amsterdam for the Hallowe’en weekend, I decided to head up there today via the intercity train from Brussels. Today Brussels was rather gray, with a light morning coat of rain. Rather than getting lost by taking the wrong tram, which I did my first night here, I was very proud of myself for catching the proper tram and making it right into Brussels Midi station without a hitch.

Then I stepped into the train station ticket area and within a couple of minutes spoke with an agent who stamped my ticket and told me where I should board … in ten minutes. Ten minutes? What? No lines, no waiting? No pointless security checks? For this American that was pleasant news. Off to platform 20 I went…
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I’ve long advocated for the rational exploration of the psychological and spiritual benefits of psychedelics. I believe, as do many, that they have therapeutic potential unlike anything found in pharmacology today. Luckily, the medical research is catching up with us.

The medical journal Psychopharmacology has just published the results of a study at Johns Hopkins that explored the impact of psilocybin on a group of healthy, normal middle-aged adults, and there seems to be little room for interpretation. I am ecstatic that rational scientific inquiry is backing up what many have known for eons - that these are powerful chemicals that offer access to the subconscious and the Divine.
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I have had the pleasure of working with some very talented, brave law enforcement officials who upheld civility with honor and dedication. I think police officers form a vital part of our social fabric.

But this whole counter-terrorism cop-march of the last five years is a march in the wrong direction.
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I’ve been debating - for well over a year - how much of this I should thrash out in public. But knowing that there are a great deal of young people in the world struggling with this, and wanting to tell them how wonderful their pain can be, I think I’ve finally figured out a way to put it out there without hurting anyone.

My father abandoned my mother, brother and me when I was very young. I know now that there were many reasons - the situation he was in personally at the time, his own psychoemotional capacity, his perception of what was best for my brother and me, and his relationship with my mother. I have seen him once (an awkward and near-wordless exchange in a courthouse in 1987) in the last 25 years.
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Over the last 24 hours or so, the media has gone wild with this story about the pot muffins that were delivered to a school in Texas. Today, the MSNBC news babes are parroting that the muffins “made 18 people sick.” The Fort Worth Star Telegram and UPI are using similar language. Can we at least all agree that these people were stoned, not sick? What this person did is wrong and properly illegal, but I am continually baffled that in 2006 we still suffer from the most absurd and irrational case of reefer madness.

In today’s Dallas Morning News piece, reporter Kristine Hughes does her part to perpetuate the mythological madness by reiterating that 19 people “became ill” from the muffins. Ill, Kristine? Don’t you mean high, stoned, freaked out, or - if you really want to be gentle - affected? But ill? That’s just intellectually dishonest.
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[EDIT: See Zeller's New York Times piece that followed, and my wet-blanket remarks therein.]

Over the past couple of months, there’s been a great deal of fresh hysteria about Myspace, sex offenders and the “dangers” of kids going online without draconian supervision. (Which, I’d like to remind parents, your children will subvert. Consider fostering trust and openness. I know it’s harder work than just instilling fear, but it produces much brighter humans.)

This moral panic is nothing new. Every year or two there’s a fresh bout of breathless reporting about a predator who used the Internet to lure some 14-year-old out of her Kentucky trailer and into a Taco Bell, then before she knew it she was in the back of a van in Miami being used as an ashtray. Setting aside the underlying chronic social horror that this guy seemed a better option than whatever was going on back in that trailer, this is another example of confusion about what is dangerous and what is not.

Much like plane crashes and anorexia, the media - in reporting these rare but sad situations - conducts a feat as stunning for its logical acrobatics as it is its fallacy by positing that these situations should force us to ask if the Internet is organically dangerous.
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Alex Williams penned a salacious piece in today’s New York Times centered around the “weight anxiety” experienced by girls leading up to Spring Break. That we are, for “sufferers of eating disorders,” moving into “the most dangerous time of year.”

Self-denial and restraint in America? Now that’s dangerous - to our way of life.

Setting aside that the backdrop of alcohol abuse over Spring Break dwarfs any danger of starving oneself into a bikini, I should start by saying that I understand anorexia nervosa can be debilitating and dangerous for those affected by it. Just as I sympathize with people in plane crashes or victims of pit viper bites and lightning burns.
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I’ve never been exposed to a solid intellectual argument for prevailing US drug policy that, if followed to its logical conclusion, wouldn’t turn sweet cream butter into a Schedule A substance.

Something’s wrong when advertisements that warn of the “dangers” of marijuana are immediately followed by ads glorifying alcohol - a dangerous drug which is involved in nearly half of the nation’s accidental deaths. Or when we miss the haunting surreality of a talk show segment that explores the “dangers of ecstasy” then tells us how a troubled teen found help with Prozac.
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The unspoken truth about the media buzz surrounding Jessica Simpson’s visit to Congress is something very primal that most people aren’t comfortable talking about in pleasant company. Ron Reagan said it quite brilliantly tonight on Chris Matthews’ show when he observed that “meeting Jessica Simpson is the closest most of these guys will ever come to an erotic experience.” Well put (not that she’s my type.) But why do so few dare say that out loud?

As with many things from food to drugs, Americans - most especially the so-called “intelligentsia” - have a rather schizophrenic attitude about beauty and sexual attraction. Most will uncomfortably admit, if hard pressed, that beauty really matters; but we seem to want to pretend it doesn’t, as if it’s somehow less worthy of our attention and admiration than intelligence or charisma.
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I got to thinking today about the effect 9-11-01 has had on my geopolitical view. In some ways it’s made me more apocalyptic; that is, I’m a bit more skeptical about humanity’s long-term prognosis on this planet than I was five years ago. The bullet train of human technological progress is hurtling us toward a future when small numbers of angry and disaffected people can (and will) do unthinkable things to frightened masses.

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I’ll start by saying I don’t mean to imply that all psychedelic experiences are beatific and profound. Trust me, I’m fully aware that sometimes you just lie on the floor for four hours trying to talk a seven-foot bag of Skittles out of stealing your sofa while Abba endlessly sings the theme to Welcome Back Kotter.

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