The northlondonhippy

It’s Mon­day morn­ing, and I could have used a bit more sleep really, espe­cially con­sid­er­ing the day I have ahead of me today. I’m not unrested, but I could have ben­e­fit­ted from sleep­ing later. I went to bed at about 2am last night, set my alarm for noon, but woke up at 8am. Don’t know why, well maybe I do.

The Israelis killed Sheik Yassin with a mis­sile. He was the spir­i­tual leader of Hamas. He was in jail for many years, but released a few years ago when the peace process in the mideast appeared to be mov­ing for­ward. His death today is going to have a very seri­ous effect on the sta­bil­ity of the region. Expect major retal­i­a­tion and revenge against Israeli for this, they’re say­ing Ariel Sharon per­son­ally approved the oper­a­tion. I’m not going to argue whether they were right to assas­i­nate him or not, it really doesn’t mat­ter. Now that he is dead, there’s going to to be a whole new level of shit there. I’m watch­ing live cov­er­age of a huge his funeral in Gaza right now — show­ing tens of thou­sands of very angry peo­ple. It’s not going to take long before it all kicks off.

I spent the day off my face on magic mush­rooms yes­ter­day. I’ve men­tioned them before as it is a fairly recent hobby of mine. If you check my very first blog entry, there are sev­eral links to sites you may wish to visit for more infor­ma­tion. They have been used by peo­ple for thou­sands of years and have a very strong effect.

I’ve taken acid a cou­ple of times and I have to say I much pre­fer magic mush­rooms. They are nat­ural, eas­ier on your sys­tem and there is no real come­down. From what I have read, you would need to con­sume your own weight in shrooms for them to be toxic, so phys­i­cally they are fairly safe, as long as you know what you are taking.

I’ve never picked them in the wild and wouldn’t know how to spot them any­way. All the shrooms I have had were farmed, either in Hol­land or here in the UK. You can order them on the net, many head­shops sell them, the mar­kets in Cam­den and Por­to­bello road also have stalls which sell them.

I pur­chased a grow kit a few weeks ago to pro­duce my own. It’s amaz­ingly sim­ply, you just take the lid off the take-away style con­tainer, put it some­place slightly warm and spray it with water twice a day. The shrooms grow very quickly, I’m nearly fin­ished with my third flush in as many weeks.

In their fresh and nat­ural state, the mush­rooms are 100% legal, the com­pa­nies who sell them had this point clari­ifed by the Home Office in writ­ing. They become a class “A” sub­stance when you inten­tion­ally dry them, so its best to keep them fresh.

They are also more potent when they are fresh, though you have to con­sume a fair bit to get the really wild effects. I took a rea­son­ably large dose on Sun­day, but at this point I am quite expe­ri­enced and know what to expect.

I always make sure I am in a safe, secure place when I trip on shrooms, phys­i­cally and men­tally. Evy­thing that needs doing around the house gets done before I start. I’ve recently dis­cov­ered that it is more enjoy­able to trip dur­ing day­light hours, as the nat­ural light makes things look bet­ter, so I ingested the shrooms at about 2pm.

As I hate the taste, I threw the shrooms into my blender with some juice and turned it into smoothie. It tasted absolutely foul, but I man­aged to gulp it down quickly. Then I sat down and smoked a spliff.

Peo­ple can some­times feel a bit of nau­sea when they eat shrooms, but this passes quickly and a joint at this stage helps min­i­mize this feel­ing. Within about 15 min­utes, I could feel them begin to kick in. Like any drug expe­ri­ence, it is a bit hard to describe, but I will try.

At first, it is almost a bit speedy, like you just had ten cups of espresso. You start to feel happy, almost euphoric, some­thing def­i­nitely changes in your brain. Within about 30 min­utes, the visual effects begin. It starts with per­ceiv­ing light dif­fer­ently, you may notice a sud­den increase in bright­ness on the edges of your vision, as if some­one was shin­ing a torch at you. Colours increase in bright­ness and inte­sity, your vision becomes sharper and more crisp. At this point, you might also notice things mov­ing or breath­ing slightly. Pat­terns begin to emerge in the tex­tures of fab­ric, my cat’s fur breathes as well.

Now, what’s hap­pen­ing in your brain is that the drug is mak­ing your neural synapses fire a bit quicker, mean­ing your brain is receiv­ing more infor­ma­tion than is really there, its almost a state of hyper-reality. Your mind can race, flit­ting from one topic to another. I find myself try­ing to not think, and just expe­ri­ence what’s going on around me.

Music takes on a dis­tinctly dif­fer­ent qual­ity, sound­ing crisper, fuller with more seper­a­tion between the indi­vid­ual tracks. You may expe­ri­ence sound as a phys­i­cal sen­sa­tion. It it really a lovely feeling.

Once I am peak­ing, I like to lose myself in music video chan­nels. When you dis­cover a new song or video while under the influ­ence of shrooms, it can amaz­ing, yes­ter­day was no excep­tion. I heard sev­eral songs for the first time, which really impressed me.

The first was from a band I’ve never heard of before, called Ras­mus. The song, enti­tled “In The Shad­ows” is a hard-edged, rock-pop song and very catchy. The video is an expen­sive, well directed piece, and is sure to grab your atten­tion. I don’t know any­thing about the band, but keep an eye out, I expect it to sell well.

The next one I dis­cov­ered is the lat­est sin­gle from N.E.R.D, called “She Wants to Move” and it blew my mind. I’ve read about N.E.R.D before, but never really paid atten­tion. This song rocks! It’s got a great fusion of beats, funny, nasty lyrics and some wicked gui­tar. I am down with these guys, I could do busi­ness with them! I’m down­load­ing, I mean pur­chas­ing this one from my local high street retailer today!

The third song that grabbed me is the lat­est offer­ing from Out­kast. I’ve had the Speakerbox/The Love Below for some­time, and I have been hooked on Dre3000’s disc. “Hey Ya” is as close to per­fec­tion as a sin­gle gets. I hadn’t really given Big Boi’s side that much time, but I heard “The Way You Move” prop­erly and was blown away. The horns are very retro, 70s, Earth, Wind and Fire style and it is a very smooth slick sound. It’s another win­nder. Those Out­kast guys are very tal­ented, they first caught my atten­tion with Stanko­nia a cou­ple of years ago. It deserves all the acclaim its received.

The other gen­eral obser­va­tion I came away with yes­ter­day after watch­ing sev­eral straight hours of music videos is that they want every­one to be a cool black guy, pimp daddy. Every video seems to be show­ing me that all the cool black guys have all the fun. This is hard to explain, but if you watch, a com­mon theme emerges from all these videos. They say, “I’m a cool black guy, I’m rich, I know how to dance, I know how to party. All the sexy, hot­ties want to get down with me. If you pay atten­tion, I can show you how, just like this. Break it down!” Watch a bit, you will see what I mean.

Any­way, that was my day on Sun­day, totally mon­ged off my face on strong magic mush­rooms. Its not for every­one, but I surely do like it!

Believe it or not, I have a job inter­view today. A real one, for some free­lance work with a very large cor­po­ra­tion. I’m try­ing not to be ner­vous, but the fact is, this is the first real inter­view I’ve had since I left my last job. Yikes!

It’s going to be infor­mal, I am meet­ing the guy for a cof­fee this after­noon. I’ve been in touch with him for nearly six months, wait­ing for an open­ing. Finally, last week, he told me there was the chance of loads of work with him. I am very encour­aged by this, but not count­ing my chick­ens just yet.

I still don’t know when the job might start, what the hours will be, how many days a month I will get, and how much it will pay. Its a senior posi­tion, so the money should be decent and the hours shouldn’t be too bad. I’m hop­ing that it will be full-time or fairly close to that, as I really need some money.

I’m going to have to wrap this up now, I’ve to go try on my suit and see if it still fits. This hippy doesn’t dress-up very often and its a very long time since I’ve worn it. If it doesn’t fit, I’m going to have to make a quick run up to the high street and hope to find some­thing in my size.

Stay cool, stay groovy, ride the vibe.