Lusid Disillusions

6/8/11

young92782 — Tue, 08 Jun 2010 14:24:14 +0000

Jerome in the Loop sells hash.
I want to garden and make good beer.
Maybe I will graff my truck, I’ve never paid for a paintjob.
I also need to exercise.
and Save money.

Happy New Year!

young92782 — Thu, 07 Jan 2010 12:36:42 +0000

2010 is here and I get a sense that this will be a good year. My new year’s resolution is probably a common one this year in light of the way this recession has proven how crazy we U.S.Americans handle our money… Yes, I have resolved to put myself on a budget this year! My girlfriend, Amy, helped me type up a simple Google spreadsheet displaying all my pertinent financial info and, after doing some tweaking of my own, I must say it is actually rather fun to look at! By viewing my finances in such a categorical way, with the ability to mathematically see what the future holds for me financially, it seems way easier to set goals and limitations with my money. It is amazing to see how, with a little discipline, I may be able to save a LOT of money this year! I only wish I had thought of it earlier! Whatever your New Year’s resolutions may be, I wish you all the best in sticking with them throughout the year!

Essay Challenge 2009: Beat Philosophy

young92782 — Wed, 04 Feb 2009 22:07:23 +0000

Kerouac’s On the Road was the first book I read after I moved to Reno a little over two years ago. The story tied in perfectly with the road adventure I had just embarked on; driving from St. Louis through flat Kansas, over the cold, tall Rockies, across the “Loneliest Road in America,” and down into what I would later see as the pit-hole that is Reno. I also felt a sense of connectivity with Kerouac’s character: the philosophic observer who throws caution to the wind in exchange for a life of experience and sensation. Where I got lost on my journey, I now realize, is that, after a while, it stopped being a journey. I still had bills to pay so I got a job. Instead of using what I worked for for higher purposes, I drank it all at crappy college bars where I rarely ever even had an intelligent conversation.
This all comes to mind after reading my first essay for the 2009 challenge, Existentialism and the Beats: A
Renegotiation, by Erik Ronald Mortenson. Like the title suggests, Mortenson’s main idea in this essay is that, while the Beats had an obvious respect for the existentialists who predated them, they themselves were their own entity whose members chose a path of experience rather than philosophical meandering. Mortenson highlights the different writing styles of the two movements as an example:

The schism here is between reflective and spontaneous forms of writing. Existentialists may try to “entice” their readers into authenticity with fictional accounts, but their use of the literary is almost always based on a concretization of abstract, reflective thought…The Beats do not entice; they demonstrate. An ancillary goal is to get the reader to develop their own brand of authenticity, but their primary goal is to present the authenticity that they have achieved (or are trying to achieve) to the reader via the written word.

Mortenson says that this experience is demonstrated to the reader by the Beat’s pervasive use of prose. This is evident in Ginsburg, from Howl, to his letter to the Hell’s Angels (no link, see Hunter S. Thompson’s Hell’s Angels). Kerouac even suggests writing “without consciousness in semi-trance.” The influence of Freud upon the Beat’s does not go unnoticed in this essay.
After reading this essay, I am tempted to go back and reread On the Road as well as other Kerouac classics, like Dr. Sax and, of course, Dharma Bums and The Subterraneans. I also have a renewed optimism about the journey that life is and must not forget to keep on with the experience of every moment.

Vegan Adventures in Cooking

young92782 — Wed, 04 Feb 2009 01:08:34 +0000

I recently purchased Isa Chandra Moskowitz’s Vegan With a Vengeance recipe book. I am not vegan, nor am I even vegetarian, but I do see the positive benefits of eliminating meat and dairy from one’s diet and I admire the act of protest that veganism offers against the systematic abuse of animals in those industries. Isa’s book mostly highlights this second attribute of veganism, combining it with plenty of punky-playfulness, anarchich-DIY tips, and notes from her cat, all the while leaving out the boring health-related stuff we already know and which can all too often become repetitive in diet-specific cookbooks.

Since getting this book, I have excitedly cooked two recipes from it and another two from Isa’s related website, The Post-Punk Kitchen (see link in sidebar). I must confess, I had no idea that vegan food could be so delicious! While devouring the recipes I’ve made (and saving some leftovers for later) I experienced a new found satisfaction in knowing that what was tasting so good on my tongue did not involve strapping animals to sucking machines, cooping them up in unnatural environments, and/or slamming bolts through their skulls. Even without this satisfaction, the food was among the best I’ve ever eaten.

Last Friday, I made “Eggplant and Squash alla Napoletana” from Vegan With a Vengeance, page 188. Making this recipe also required that I make the “Sun-dried Tomato Pesto” from pages 183. I found the pesto very easy to make, but, next time I must be sure not to use pre-olive-oil-soaked tomatoes, for they gave the pesto a potent, pizza-y flavor which I found slightly over-powering. Other than that, I learned how easy pesto is to make.

Putting together the other ingredients was a bit more complicated, but still not very difficult. While I liked the way the squash-mash turned out, I found that I don’t much care for fried eggplant. That aside, the entire meal was delicious. I hungrily wolfed it down, as did my uncle. Leftovers were even better after the flavors had had a chance to meld together overnight. Three days later, I am still eating it!

Lepidopterist of the Cosmos

young92782 — Fri, 30 Jan 2009 18:25:41 +0000

The Butterfly Hunter

Though I am a great admirer of his philosophical and historical insights, it is extremely rare for the name “Terrence McKenna” to ever come up in my conversations with others. The main reason for this is because, outside of the internet, I have very few friends or associations who share my passion for the type of theories and ruminations that McKenna was so great at and well known for espousing. In fact, it has only happened once that someone has seen one of McKenna’s books upon my shelf and become excited because they, too, knew who he was. While this, in return, also excited me greatly, the conversation which ensued between us was not very memorable. The reason for this was because we each had such different construct in our heads about who we believed the man to be. While Terrence’s work, to me, has always been so much more than adolescent drug culture and idol-worship, I did not know him for much more than his lectures, books, and theories which were, admittedly, influenced by McKenna’s use of a plethora of entheogenic substances, a.k.a… drugs. I never bothered finding out what type of man he was at home or when he wasn’t doing the things he was so well known for doing (again.., drugs). Today, I discovered that he collected butterflies. Each butterfly he captured he wrapped inside of a tiny piece of paper; paper from magazines and newspapers for example, even old bank receipts…, and each piece of paper, like the dates and locations he marked on them, in turn, also told their own tales. These tiny, folded, paper-coffins became the final resting places for the insects inside them until even after McKenna’s own death when, in 2007, his daughter, Klea, began unwrapping and photographing them. Her wonderful exhibit, The Butterfly Hunter, displays each of these artifacts, each with its own tale, in chronological order upon a bare white canvas. The exhibit will take you out of the mindset of fractals and psychedelics and show you another side of Terrence McKenna; a side which perhaps believed that if walking caterpillars could sprout wings and fly, maybe, one day, we would too.

Please also go here to read Techgnosis’ writer Erik Davis’s review of Klea’s exhibit, Terrence McKenna’s Butterflies. He is a waay better writer than I am.

Starting Off Right…

young92782 — Fri, 30 Jan 2009 14:36:20 +0000

…And what better way to kick off my blog and have something to keep coming back to than a good ol’ challenge? Thanks to Andi at Tripping Toward Lucidity for bringing to my attention the 2009 Essay Reading Challenge; where participants challenge themselves to read and post reviews on 10, 20, or 30 essays during 2009. I suppose I’m a bit tardy to class, but, I’m really looking forward to this challenge for both the reading and writing aspects of it (as well as reading and commenting on what other people have read). I think 20 is a good number for me to challenge myself with because I love reading essays and I do read a lot of them, so 10 is a little short-sighted. I want to have plenty to write about, but 30 may be setting the bar too high, especially if seasoned pros are doing only that many. So, 20 it is. As it happens, I just started reading a book of essays yesterday titled The Mystery of 2012: Predictions, Prophecies & Possibilities.
I discovered that there are many different challenges out there in the w3. Another reading challenge I found was the 666 Horror/Paranormal Challenge hosted by Morbid Romantic. Though this sounds extremely interesting to me, I’m not quite sure I’m yet ready to get myself in too over my head with these things. I’ll definitely be keeping my eye on this one though.
I can’t wait to post my first review!

Hi. and welcome to Lusid Disillusions

young92782 — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 17:50:19 +0000

I thank you for coming.

There are three main reasons for the creation of this blog. Sharing, learning and joining. Sharing with you my thoughts, knowledge, interests, and curiosities. Learning about blogging, CSS and website creation, different information gathering tools and my own thoughts, ideas and feelings. And finally, joining this vast consortium of human creativity, connectedness, and sharing that, as I write, is helping to hurl us all further down the path of our evolution; getting us ever closer to where we are going. The approaches taken and topics covered here will vary greatly until, I suspect, I become more comfortable in some areas than others and my focus will sharpen. My plan is to try everything and limit myself to nothing.

Enjoy,

Young92782