Build Date: Tue Jan 14 21:50:07 2025 UTC
I loathe people who keep dogs. They are cowards who haven't got the guts to bite people themselves.
-- August Strindberg
McKenna, 1990s Dying Real Bad
1999-08-15 17:32:18
Damn. Well, sure, of course it was going to happen sometime, but I wasn't really sure that the 1990s were really going to end until I heard that Terence McKenna was super dead sick.
Like, I dunno if anyone else remembers this stuff, but the 90s came on REAL STRONG here in San Francisco, around 1989 or so. It was this really weird, optimistic yet cynical, bad crazy time. There were basically 4 planks to the 90s platform: electronic music, computers, green politics, and Terence McKenna.
Terence is the world's foremost expert in ethnobiology -- in other words, he knows all the best plants to get you fucking HIGH. But unlike a lot of cynical drug advocates, Terence BELIEVES in drugs. He thinks they're IMPORTANT -- that they're a gateway to the IMMORTAL and INEFFABLE world. He thinks that the Shadow People that you meet in Mushroom Land have something to say to you. That all those guys in loincloths with blood coming out of their ears in remote Amazon villages are doing something right.
Anyways, he was the spectacular godchild of early 1990s SF. Like, people would quote him all the time and stuff. Even long after all that THING that made the 90s cool and interesting and important kinda got dashed on the rocks by venture capitalists and W I R E D and whoever, even after that, Super Terence was still making the rounds, telling people about s. divinorum or whatever. He's been putting in the time to make the Dreamtime happen.
Well, now, he's dying. Check out the info at the site below, and take an extra cap tonight in honor of the Mushroom Man, eh? Tell them the Shadow People sent you.
T O P S T O R I E S
The Future Ain't What It Used To Be
Ideas have taken horrifying shape and rooted into our modern reality. (More...)
The Once & Future King of Dust
Only The Onion could have acquired Infowarts. (More...)
Another Nobel Prize-Winning Author Describes Drunkenness
This book won a Pulitzer Prize. Here's its famous paragraph on getting drunk... (More...)
Why I'm pretty sure JD Vance had sex with a couch
True or false? The answers await us in that magical land where all truths are revealed -- the internet. (More...)
In 2010 Dr. Cheng-Huai Ruan discovered a way to cause a patient with an abnormal heartbeat to get back into a normal rhythm by sticking a finger up the patient's ass. (More...)
WKRP in Cincinnati aired from 1978 through 1982. Howard Hesseman played Dr. Johnny Fever, a DJ from Los Angeles who was fired from his previous job for saying the word "booger" on the air. In the show Hesseman would do some dialogue, introduce a song, and start the song. You'd hear a few notes, but never the whole song. (More...)
C L A S S I C P I G D O G
The Deep Dark Underbelly of the Star Wars Myth, or Ramayana Remembered
It's a fact: Star Wars is a blatant plagiarism of an ancient Asian legend, and the long lines of devout Star Wars freaks are really unscrupulous Asian copyright busters. From Indonesia to Thailand to Nepal, videos are available for sale or rent before they're even released in the US and UK due to this nerdy camcorder-clutching bunch. (More...)
Our team of crack journalists went insane, and made the drive from Concord, California to Concord, New Hasmpshire on Interstate 80. Read the insightful observations of our intrepid travelers made on their journey into the heartland. (More...)
Ratsnatcher gets HOT HOT HOT in this classic road tale that looks at the steamy underworld of Bay Area Linux advocacy. Loosen your collar for this one! (More...)
About 14 years ago when I was on a road trip and stopped in Seattle, I was invited to a party. At this party there were these little tiny glasses sitting in a flat-bottomed bowl of ice. Thin cylinders about an inch in diameter and 4 inches tall, with thick glass at the bottom. Into these were poured frozen AKVAVIT... also known as the water of life. (More...)
Brother Wayne Lays Down the Truth
Flesh interviews Wayne Kramer of MC5. (More...)
A Nobel Prize-Winning Author Describes Liquor
Curled up cozy with a good book? All warm and snuggly and thinking about friends far away? So am I, reading the greatest story by the greatest writer -- when he suddenly starts waxing philosophical about liquor! (More...)
