Badmike wrote:Then again, just perhaps, the ultra-religious or "chosen" such as Moses, Abraham, etc were actually able to pierce the veil surrrounding 99% of us due to some sort of hyper awareness and saw more than you and I ever will....Mike B.
bombadil wrote:IYKWIM
bombadil wrote:We gotta pursue this in person one day, Mike, if I can get my ass to GenCon one of these years. I've got some personal stories about piercing that veil, which by the way is a perfect metaphor. It's something I'm seriously interested in. Though I'm not religious anymore (having been raised Roman Catholic, cough), I won't discount anyone's personal experiences like the ones you described as insane or impossible after some of the things I've seen and heard. Rather than feeling closer to God, though, my experiences with larger reality initially left me feeling a little disappointed and "fooled", but now I think I'm beginning to approach a better understanding of it. By the way, have you read "True Hallucinations" or "Food of the Gods"? I was reminded of the chapter on sugar as one of the major sanctioned drugs in Food after reading over your posts on Tim Tams.
Bracton wrote:Except for Rod Blagojevich. He's just nuts.
Badmike wrote:have never ingested a mind altering drug in my life.... Mike B.
Will Anti-Porn Law Kill Comics In The UK?By Graeme McMillan, 9:00 AM on Sat Jan 31 2009, 20,929 views Is extreme government censorship about to rob British comic book fans of their monthly fix of ultra-violence? That's what some paranoid fans are expecting, thanks to a new (and vague) anti-pornography law in the UK.The new law - given the extremely vague name "The Criminal Justice and Immigration Act" - makes possessing any "extreme image" produced "solely or principally for the purpose of sexual arousal" illegal, and some British comic fans are so nervous that we're wondering whether they're reading different issues of Batman than we are. A statement from the fansite Comic Shop Voice reads:Do you own any of the following:Wanted (Top Cow)Batman: The Killing Joke (DC)Watchmen (DC)Punisher (Marvel)Lost Girls (Top Shelf Productions)Manga (pick a title)Cerebus (Aardvark Vanaheim)(The list continues)Congratulations you are a comic book fan and the government would like to arrest you, fine you, confiscate your comic collection and ask you to sign the sex offenders' list.The specific subsections of the law that worry the site are mentions of:· an act which threatens a person's life (Hold on! Isn't that how Batman, Punisher, Judge Dredd get anything done?)· an act which results, or is likely to result, in serious injury to a person's anus, breasts or genitals. (A kick in the balls or arse would constitute this, and a kick in the balls is a well trodden part of humour)Of course, I still don't think anyone would necessarily mistake The Punisher with something designed "solely for the act of sexual arousal," but admittedly and unfortunately, comics have a history of being mistaken for pornography in the eyes of the law. We'd like to think that the British police have more important things to do than crack down on comics, but the truth is that the law doesn't have any exception for media outside of cinema, leaving the medium unjustly threatened. Maybe the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund should look into opening a British branch, just in case...Comic Shop Voice (Via Fleshbot)
Of the many new commodities that made their way into Europe during the breakup of the medieval stasis, one in particular emerged as the new spice or drug of choice. This was cane sugar. Sugar had been known for centuries as a rare medicinal substance. The Romans knew that it was derived from a bamboolike grass. But the tropical conditions needed for the cultivation of sugarcane ensured that sugar would be a rare and imported commodity in Europe. Only in the nineteenth century, at the encouragement of Napoleon I, were sugar beets developed as an alternative to cane sugar. Is it stretching a point to discuss sugar in a history of human drug use? It is not. Sugar abuse is the world's least discussed and most widespread addiction. And it is one of the hardest of all habits to kick. Sugar addicts may be maintenance users or they may be binge eaters. The depths of serious sugar addiction are exemplified by bulimics who may binge on sugar-saturated food and then induce vomiting or use a laxative purge to enable them to eat more sugar. Imagine if a similar practice were associated with heroin addiction -- how much more odious and insidious the use of heroin would then seem!Sugar abuse is often involved in the development of serious alcohol abuse; an absolute correlation has been shown between high sugar consumption and high alcohol intake outside meals. After alcohol and tobacco, sugar is the most damaging addictive substance consumed by human beings. Its uncontrolled use can be a major chemical dependence. Let us be absolutely clear, sugar is entirely unnecessary to the human diet. It is a "kick", nothing more. Yet for this kick, the dominator culture of Europe was willing to betray the ideals of the Enlightenment by its collusion with slave traders. In 1800 virtually every ton of sugar imported into England had been produced with slave labor. The ability of the ego-dominator culture to suppress these realities is astonishing.If it seems that too much ire is vented on the sugar habit, it is because in many ways the addiction to sugar seems a distillation of all the wrongheaded attitudes that attend our thinking about drugs.
Badmike wrote:That dude will either be in prison or have his own talk show by the end of the year....bank on it.Mike B.
jasonw1239 wrote:Mike, I don't think I would want to meet anybody that would get aroused from reading a Cerebus comic.
Badmike wrote:You crazy Brits!!!!
