There's a large article in the Belfast Telegraph today on cocaine, and how it has insinuated itself into elite levels of Irish society. Like grabby opening paragraphs? How's this:

The airline pilot, the nun, and the government minister. Everybody in Ireland wants to know who they are. Then there's the teacher, the nurse, the lawyer and the top doctors. All are said to admit, candidly but anonymously, that they snort cocaine. The pilot, in fact, says he takes it in the cockpit.

This illumination of Ireland's closet coke culture comes by way of 'High Society', a two-part television documentary shown on Ireland's RTE. Although this may be shocking for Ireland, I can only imagine how many high-society American counterparts there must be. Ever since Miami Vice in the '80s cocaine has been chic. Of course people with money will want to try it, and do more, and give it to their friends...

Or is it just her latest video?

WILD AMY WINEHOUSE was filmed blitzed out of her skull and struggling to talk after sucking in crack fumes from a glass pipe.

The tormented singing sensation took hit after hit of the deadly drug after a 19-minute binge in which she snorted powdered ECSTASY and COCAINE.

And she admitted she had just popped six VALIUM pills to “bring myself down”.

Okay, cry for help or fun times for the young and famous? You decide...

Video at the link below.

The latest from the lads in Tool. This video features artwork by Alex Grey and guitarist Adam Jones.

Laura Huxley's death didn't remain unnoticed. It was reported on several websites, including DoseNation. However, somehow it failed to catch our attention that in December we have lost another woman who can be counted to "psychedelic pioneers". Anita Hofmann, 94 years old, passed away on December 20th 2007.

She didn't have good credentials for being remembered so well. Unlike Laura Huxley, she didn't write any books herself, remained all her life in the shadow of her great husband - the likely reason for his longevity. I never knew her, my contact with the Hofmann family is reduced to receiving a photo with personal greetings after writing a letter to Dr. Hofmann at the age of 17 (a young enthusiastic theorist, not the "old" melancholic theorist...). Would I have been wiser today and have written to Mrs. Anita instead? I don't know, but let me give all I can give - my own, different perspective on her life and death.

Maybe due to the fact that I'm still a theorist, maybe due to having absorbed enough of social philosophy, I'm just not responsive to traditional psychedelic "slogans" like "We are all one". For me they range somewhere between naive and oppressive (when they become a reason for indulgently dismissing personal perspectives). So my point of view is rather to remember the singularity of everyone's life. How can we make this effort? Is it really possible to remember everyone, to acknowledge everyone's inner history? I will at least try to distinguish Anita from the shadow in which she spent almost all her life.

A little unknown photo, found in the book "Albert Hofmann und die Entdeckung des LSD": Anita ice-skating on the frozen surface of Arosa lake, dressed in a fluttering black dress, her lips open in the pleasure of this moment. She spreads her arms and lifts her leg as if she was going to take off and spin above the ice for a moment. This isn't something anyone can do, one needs training. Has she perhaps even been a figure skating athlete before marrying Hofmann? And still she's remembered only as The Discoverer's wife.

MAPS piece of news no. 5 is titled "Albert Hofmann Celebrates his 102nd Birthday on January 11th". Only in the third sentence we learn that this celebration wasn't as happy as it should be. I can understand the desire to underline joyful events more than the sad ones, but still it is a bit uncomfortable for me to find Anita's death so obscured.

Some facts are actually wrong in this article. Trying to create an image of a perfect wife in a few sentences, the author confuses people: "Anita, the wife of Swiss chemist Albert Hofmann, administered a glass of milk to him as a possible antidote for the worlds first LSD experience in 1943", "when Albert bicycled home from his Sandoz lab in Basel after ingesting 250 micrograms of LSD, it was Anita who cared for him and was by his side". However, Hofmann's book states that three women were actually involved. Miss Ramstein, his assistant, who accompanied him home, telephoned Anita and watched over Albert until the doctor and, later, Anita, came. Then Mrs. R., the neighbor, who brought the milk. And, of course, Anita, who had earlier gone to visit her parents in Lucern and had to return in hurry. These three women are fused into one in these sentences. Are three women too much for the myth of the discovery of LSD?

I was reading over some notes of trip reports from years gone by and came across a passage that struck me as interesting:

What is this stringy, spider-webby stuff that comes off my fingertips when I'm starting to trip? Is it persperation, like cotton candy, spider-web on my fingers, lips, face...

And from twenty or so minutes later in the report:

That cobwebby stuff, when it evaporates it leaves a nice, soft powdery feeling.

Re-reading this passage years later I know exactly what I am talking about, yet still have no idea what it is. Any thoughts?

The Stranger's Brendan Kiley has a retrospective piece on his time as a youthful gas huffer, including trip reports, the difficulties of keeping the habit under wraps and more

The next Saturday, I snuck back into the shed and sat next to the squat silver canister. I unscrewed the cap, leaned over the aperture, felt the vaporous tentacles reach into my stomach, and heard the call of the dark-blue bird. A small fairy girl, as tall as my forearm, appeared. She didn't make any real words, but communicated by telepathy and giggling and I admired her wings, all translucent and shiny. She lived in the rose bushes and let me know that these gardens and woods were a special place, a place I'd never been able to really see until now. There was another sound, in a minor key, and the air turned sinister. The toys and tools in the shed—tricycles, pruners, riding lawn mowers—were rumbling, rustling angrily, forming an army that could crush me with wheels, cut me with blades, bludgeon me with handles. I was an interloper, a spy in the secret, vengeful lives of toys and tools. I hoped they wouldn't hurt the Rosebush Fairy.

Okay, I'm on vacation in Bakersfield, CA, at a family reunion celebrating the 90th birthday of my wife's grandmother... and back at the hotel room, of course, all I can think to do is post this vid, which I came across via the "Awesome" blog. If you ever thought Garfield, "Suicide Is Painless," and demented psychedelic visuals were just plain meant for each other... this here is your vid.

Here's a story about a woman who hated Sean Paul so much she had to have part of her brain removed to keep from having seizures when his music came on the radio. No, this is not a joke.

Stacey Gayle really liked dancehall reggae artist Sean Paul's music, but it turned out one of his popular songs was also triggering her epileptic seizures.

"It was terrible," said Gayle, a 24-year-old New Yorker. "It didn't even have to be that loud."

The seizures were so bad that Gayle recently had part of her brain surgically removed in an effort to control her problem.

Gayle began noticing the connection between the seizures and the music in 2006, when one of Sean Paul's tracks, "Temperature," was popular. One of the first music-induced seizures happened at a cookout where the song was being played, "then it happened at a restaurant," said Gayle.

Clever little ditty from 1929.

Go on gal, don’t take me for no fool
I ain’t gonna quit you, pretty mama, while the weather’s cool
Around your back door, honey, I’m gonna creep
Just as long as you bring me two-and-a-half a week

I’ve got a girl, she works in the white folks yard
She bring me meal, I swear she brings me lard
She brings me meal, honey she brings me lard
She bring me everything honey that a girl can steal

Lord a vaudeville circus rider came to town
They got a dancer lookin’ nice and brown
They didn’t know it was against the law
For the monkey’s to stop at a five cent store
Well, just around the corner, just a minute too late
Another one standin’ at the big back gate
I’m simply wild about my good cocaine

I stood my corner, hey hey!
Here come Sal with a nose all so’
Doctors said she couldn’t smell no mo’
Lord run doctor, ring the bell
The women in the alley…
I’m simply wild about my good cocaine

Furniture man came to my house, was last Sunday morn
Asked me was my wife at home
Said she’d long been gone
Backed his wagon up to my door
Took everything I had
He carried it back to the furniture store
Honey, I did feel sad

What in the world has any man got, now
Messin’ with the furniture man?
Got no dough, stand for sho’
Certainly will back you back
Take everything from an earthly plant
From a skillet to a frying pan
If there ever was a devil born without any horns
Musta been the furniture man

I hear you mama, hey hey!
Here come Sal with a nose all so’
Doctors said she couldn’t smell no mo’
Lord go doctor, ring the bell
Women in the alley…
I’m simply wild about my good cocaine

Lord the babies in the cradle in New Orleans
The doctors kept a-whiffin’ til the baby got mean
Doctor whiffed until the baby got so’
Mama said she couldn’t smell no mo’

Lord go, Doctor, ring the bell,
The women in the alley…
I simply wild about my good cocaine
I’m simply wild about my good cocaine

I’m simply wild about my good cocaine