I don't know about you, but this sounds exactly like the kind of thing I would shell out $23 for:

A Texas man is facing charges for selling liquor without a license after he was found peddling bottles of vodka containing dead baby rattlesnakes.

Bob Popplewell, who runs "Bayou Bob's Brazos River Rattlesnake Ranch" tourist attraction west of Fort Worth, was believed to be selling the vodka in the Asian community, where snakes are seen having aphrodisiac properties, state authorities said.

Popplewell faces misdemeanour charges for not having a liquor license but will not be charged over the 10-inch (25-cm) baby snakes in the bottles.

This type of preparation is not unheard of in other parts of the world. For instance:

In some of East Asia, parts of snakes and other animals are thought to have medicinal qualities and are used to make soups, powders and other preparations. In Vietnam, for example, the serpents are added to bottles of rice whisky and wine.

Still, I imagine local law enforcement in San Antonio will not exactly be tripping over itself to steal this stuff from the evidence locker. Sad to imagine those baby snakes gave their lives just to have that elixir dumped down the drain - oh the injustice!

Over at Hug The Monkey - very likely the only blog out there focused solely on oxytocin - a guest writer offers an experience report with a spray on product that supposedly contains this "love hormone":

I bought some Liquid Trust, which, as you know, claims to have Oxytocin in it - not sure how much - manufacturer says potency is a trade secret. Anyway, it’s a spray to be used on your body or clothing. Instructions say it is odorless and lasts between 2 and 4 hours. Instructions say to use it "whenever you want more trust in the people around you, and when you want more passion"....

My wife and I had a counseling session at noon that day and before I left for it, I re-applied the spray as it had been over 4 hours since the first application. I am normally a bit anxious before these sessions as there have been some sessions where issues were raised that caused a lot of tension. I felt a bit anxious as the session started, but that soon dissipated. When I saw my wife at the beginning of the session, she appeared extra radiant and beautiful. She was in good spirits and no big, heavy issues came up in counseling. By the time the hour was up, I was mesmerized by her - I couldn't stop looking at her and admiring her glow and beauty. Even though I had an important meeting at 1:00, I blew that off and we went to lunch.

Lunch was extra delightful. At the restaurant, I found myself noticing others more and striking up conversations with people spontaneously. I found myself smiling at others and them noticing and smiling back - more than usual. While we were eating, my wife was talking but I was soaking her in - her smile, her laugh, her hair - all were extraordinarily glowing and wonderful. I was smitten big time. Everything she said was interesting. I could hardly remember to eat my lunch. She was the most beautiful, engaging, sensual woman I had ever seen.

The story unfolds from there, stopping short of any NSFW depictions but certainly getting the point across. The author is careful to note that subsequent uses of the spray were not as compelling, and wonders if the placebo effect is at work - but notes as well that "whether a perceived benefit is due to the treatment/drug/therapy or is simply a placebo effect, if it delivers the beneficial effect, that’s great – I’ll take it."

Of course, the Liquid Trust web site is super creepy in a "hey we're packaging MIND CONTROL!" kind of way, but the manufacturers argue that they're just implementing a more practical application of what Science^TM suggests happens naturally anyway:

Were you waiting on pins and needles for a film version of Aldous Huxley's Brave New World? If so, your luck may finally be changing: after the resolution of a contentious battle within Huxley's family for pieces of the royalty pie, it looks like none other than Leonardo DiCaprio is pushing the project forward. Apparently Leo's dad was a good friend of Laura Huxley's, and somehow, Leo caught the bug for this particular book, which the family hadn't thought possible to make until modern advances in special effects finally caught up to Huxley's futuristic vision.

DiCaprio will play John the Savage, who lives a “natural” life on a reservation while the rest of cloned humanity is lulled into docility with sex, soma (drugs) and feelies (films that also involve the senses of smell and touch). He finally escapes celebrity to become a lighthouse keeper.

“And Ridley Scott, who has just finished working with Leo on a film called Body of Lies, has volunteered himself to direct,” said George DiCaprio, who is helping to produce Brave New World. “We are due to see the first script next week.”

Hmm... you know, I just recently spent a lovely chunk of hours watching all the special features that came with the recent Blade Runner re-re-re-re-re-re-release, and honestly, DiCaprio has matured into a surprisingly formidable acting talent. Who knows - this could be something worth looking at, provided there's not a Will Ferrell movie opening that same weekend.

The NYTimes Travel section recently offered an unexpected tour through an episode in psychedelic history, as a travel writer attempted to catch a contact high by touring a part of Mexico where Kesey stayed when he was on the lam:

It was here, on this beach, that he took to the waves as I did, back in 1966. He was a hunted man then, on the run from the F.B.I. and Mexican federales, but even he, a man of great aplomb, found time for thoughtful bobbing.

“He’s working on his wave theory. This morning for breakfast he brewed and drank enough weed to put a horse in orbit. He’s been out there for three hours with his eyes closed ... imagining that he’s a piece of kelp or a jellyfish.”

The observer is Mountain Girl, one of several Merry Pranksters who followed Kesey to Manzanillo. She watches from the beach while pondering his oracular musings.

“It isn’t by getting out of the world that we become enlightened, but by getting into the world ... by getting so tuned in that we can ride the waves of our existence and never get tossed because we become the waves.”

AlterNet's DrugReporter calls attention to some new extreme silliness on the marijuana front:

Earlier this month, the U.S. National Institute on Drug Abuse announced plans to spend $4 million to establish the nation's first-ever "Center on Cannabis Addiction," which will be based in La Jolla, Calif. The goal of the center, according to NIDA's press release, is to "develop novel approaches to the prevention, diagnosis and treatment of marijuana addiction."

Not familiar with the notion of "marijuana addiction"? You're not alone. In fact, aside from the handful of researchers who have discovered that there are gobs of federal grant money to be had hunting for the government's latest pot boogeyman, there's little consensus that such a syndrome is clinically relevant -- if it even exists at all.

Just to be very clear, if you were even temporarily hood-winked by recent media claiming that marijuana withdrawal is worse for you than nicotine withdrawal, AlterNet shines its typical bright ray of common sense all over the issue:

And what does the science say? Well, according to the nonpartisan National Academy of Sciences Institute of Medicine -- which published a multiyear, million-dollar federal study assessing marijuana and health in 1999 -- "millions of Americans have tried marijuana, but most are not regular users [and] few marijuana users become dependent on it." The investigator added, "[A]though [some] marijuana users develop dependence, they appear to be less likely to do so than users of other drugs (including alcohol and nicotine), and marijuana dependence appears to be less severe than dependence on other drugs."

Just how less likely? According to the Institute of Medicine's 267-page report, fewer than 10 percent of those who try cannabis ever meet the clinical criteria for a diagnosis of "drug dependence" (based on DSM-III-R criteria). By contrast, the IOM reported that 32 percent of tobacco users, 23 percent of heroin users, 17 percent of cocaine users and 15 percent of alcohol users meet the criteria for "drug dependence."

But honestly, I'm sure the government really, truly, honestly did not have anything better to do with that $4 million - and the additional taxpayer-funded expense of keeping the center open on an ongoing basis.

Blech.

SFGate recently ran a nice little profile of Alex Grey. It's not terribly new material, but it's still nice to hear what he's up to these days, and if you're not familiar with the LSD-soaked tale of how he met his wife, it's an interesting read.

Then, on the last day of art school, I was standing on a street corner, saying goodbye to my professor, when this woman drove by and invited us to a party later that night. My professor picked me up that evening and offered me a bottle of Kahlua and LSD, and since I felt like I had nothing to lose — I had never done psychedelics before — I tried it. I drank about half the bottle. And when we got to the front door of the lady giving the party, I told her what was in the bottle, and she drank the rest of it.... I called the girl (the party giver) the next day, and asked if we could get together and talk about the experience. She ended up being my wife, 33 years ago.

Slate recently ran a fun little article debunking the idea of "pharm parties," or as they theoretically were called back in the day, "fruit salad parties." The premise is simple: kids round up a multi-colored assortment of pills and tabs from their parents' cabinets, throw them into a punch bowl, and everybody grabs something at random to swallow. You know, for fun. Apparently the Wall Street Journal recently mentioned these parties in passing, but as Slate points out, the existence of these parties seems to be almost solely in the minds of breathless local reporters, going back quite a ways. Here's one example:

The Tucson Daily Citizen alleged in a Dec. 9, 1969, article that the "old fashioned potluck supper had taken on a new twist." Instead of sharing food, young partygoers were throwing "fruit salad parties" in which "the pills are combined into a colorful mixture, and young Tucsonians gulp them by the handful" with no idea of what they were swallowing. The Daily Citizen's source was a registered nurse who had written about the topic for the American School Board Journal. (Here's is a snippet about fruit-salad parties from the Journal.) Her sources? "[D]rug seminars and lectures she has attended as well as interviews with law officers, professional men and prosecutors from throughout the United States." Not exactly primary sourcing.

It's an age-old problem: How do you stop people from getting high? A team of scientists may have found the answer with new anti-ecstasy antibodies that clean up nasty narcotics from the bloodstream:

The team have not yet tested the antibodies in humans, only in rats, but they say that a single injection can reduce the level of drug within the bloodstream for several days. By binding to drug molecules, the antibodies prevent them from reaching tissues like the heart and brain, and mark the compounds for clean up by the body.

Owens says that his team's antibodies bind to many drugs from the same chemical "family". Cocaine and nicotine are single, specific compounds but methamphetamines share a basic chemical skeleton with many other drugs. So-called "designer drugs" are made by modifying this skeleton to create specific effects. The team say their therapy works for meth, amphetamines and ecstasy.

Hooray for science! Now we can stop everyone from having fun with a simple injection. Isn't the future awesome!?

A note from a reader warns of new hijinks from the South Park gang:

Hello,

I want to suggest the new episode of South Park - 'Major Boobage' - as a news item. The plot revolves around the new way for kids to get high!

You have to watch it! It is available on bittorrent:

http://www.mininova.org/tor/1273787

I don't want to say too much more, as it will spoil the viewing, but I am sure once you watch it you'll see why it is 'newsworthy'.

Chris.

Okay, for those of you who don't have torrent or DivX capacity, this episode has something to do with "cheesing", which is huffing animal urine to get high, and includes spacey 'Heavy Metal' psychedelic scenes of the little South Park kids tripping out. Whoa!

Regardless of the fact that they are illegal to cultivate in the United States of America Joshua K, whose last name has not been revealed to conceal his identity, fires up his stove and prepares for a long day of magic mushroom cultivating. It is an exceedingly more common activity as the Internet brings information into our homes in a way that has never occurred. In fact you can read about a wide variety of different methods to cultivate many different drugs. Some websites specialize in selling equipment and others sell how-to guides and videos. The distribution of this information has become a business and people are ever more willing to put their money where their mouth is and invest in shortcuts to reach it.

Joshua says he simply began cultivating mushrooms when he was 16, after using an online search engine to do a research project. He came across a wide variety of websites that contained all sorts of information on the anatomy of hallucinogenic mushrooms, where they grew naturally outdoors and even how to cultivate them. "I was just so amazed this information was out there and available." Joshua said. Information that is surprisingly scarce in retrospect since present day online searches reveal a trove of other websites with even more resources for cultivating the psychedelic mushrooms.

"It is pretty amazing how easy it is these days," Joshua explained, "You've got Grow Buddy, countless mushroom cultivating communities and just tons of websites out there to help you." The product he mentioned, Grow Buddy (http://www.mushroomgrowbuddy.com), is a software application that actually makes the cultivation of magic mushrooms easier by eliminating repetitive calculations involved in the growing process. "This company just sells this low cost software program and eBooks and you can be growing by the end of the day." Joshua explains, "It's just gotten easier."

Joshua concedes the Internet is definitely a censor-free arena similar to the Wild West analogies many people have made, "but isn't that just awesome?" he asks. Opinions on the ethical stance towards magic mushroom cultivation aside, this shows us the beauty and magnificent power of the Internet. The sharing and distribution of ideas has never been more open, free and rewarding. Although some people like Joshua may use the internet to make use of new age drug cultivating products like Grow Buddy, you must still stop to appreciate the fact that he is able to.