I know it’s the summer and I do give a lot of space to Big Brother, but that’s not the only thing I do here on my website. I’m all about a whole lot more!

Politics, society, drugs, philosophy, and consumer electronics are among the subjects I spew drivel on; there’s a little something for everyone. Well, almost everyone. I’m sure there are some people who don’t find me to their particular liking.

They can fuck right off. It’s the rest of you, I’m interested in and more importantly, that should be interested in me!

This is going be one of those rambling, unfocused posts. I thought I should warn you right now, up front, so you’re not surprised when you work it out for yourself.

I’m starting a long run of nights at work this evening, so I thought I should pop around and do something. Anything is better than nothing, or is that just with sex?

It’s actually been a rough couple of weeks around my place; we had to put one of my cats down. He had cancer in a big, nasty way and there was nothing they could do for him. Well, they tried what they could, but when they opened up his little cat belly, it was filled to the brim with tumours. To spare him any further suffering, we had the vet put the little guy to sleep. Mrs. H was there when they did it; I couldn’t face it.

My poor dead cat was one of the nicest, friendliest, coolest cats I ever had the privilege to know and I am missing him terribly.

He wasn’t that old, only around 13 or 14 years and his illness was as sudden as it was unexpected. I rushed him to the vet’s on a Saturday afternoon and he was gone the following Tuesday.

Now, if he were a human, it wouldn’t have been as swift or merciful because we don’t like to spare people from suffering. Just ask my Dad, who from diagnosis to demise, had around a year of treatments and setbacks before experiencing a rather drawn out and unpleasant death. Oh wait, you can’t ask him, can you?

We treat our pets with more dignity than we do each other. Where’s the sense in that? When my time comes, and I do hope it is later rather than sooner, perhaps we’ll have seen sense and legalised euthanasia. If it’s good enough for the Swiss, why can’t it be OK for the rest of us? Otherwise, I’m going to have to start a special contingency fund, for one final trip to Geneva or Zurich, for when my time does come…closer. It seems like the only sane response to an otherwise insane world!

Have I brought you down with all this talk of death and such? Sorry, but now you know where my head’s been for the last couple of weeks. Thank god for soft drugs. If there were a god, or soft drugs.

But hippy, there are soft drugs and you are puffing on them right now.

Oh, yeah.

So besides missing my dead cat, watching BB and working, what else have I been up to?

Not too much. I had a drug-hell experience with some legal highs I’ve been getting online. I’m not going to tell you what they are or where you can get them, because I don’t want to see them banned. I’ve even debated mentioning this at all, but as the experience swallowed several days of my life, I thought it would be a fun story to relate.

I discovered a new range of legal highs a few months ago, though I’ve been aware of their existence for ages. After reading many favourable reviews of this line of pills, I decided to take a chance and placed an order.

I tried them, I liked them and I ordered more. And then I ordered even more.

And then, I had my drug hell with them. I took around a dozen of the little suckers in a continuous 30-hour hedonistic binge and drug orgy, before collapsing into sleep for around 6 hours.

That’s a day and a half.

When I woke up, I was down, aching and still exhausted and I was greeted with loads of text messages, voicemails, emails and other assorted forms of communication, asking if I was lying dead in a puddle of my own sick.

Thankfully, on this occasion, I wasn’t.

I then had a few days of feeling quite low and run down. It was totally self-inflicted, so I’m not asking for anyone’s sympathy or pity. This is who I am; this is what I do. Sometimes.

Rarely, actually. I haven’t had a drug-hell in ages.

The thing with these particular pills is they are very fucking good. They are the closest I’ve had that approach an E-like high. Taken in moderation, there is no real comedown or other side effect. Taken in large quantities, like a total twat, will not end well.

Yes, I was a total twat.

No one is certain what the magic ingredients are in these pills, but those who have tried them, love them. Maybe a little too much as I think they are seriously addictive. Think cocaine-addictive!

I haven’t had any since my last experience and I can’t say I have any definitive plan to try them again any time soon, but never say never. I still have some and at some point, I might reconsider, but I will not over do it. Moderation is indeed, the key.

Again, sorry I’m not telling you exactly what I took, but the less attention these pills get, the longer people will be able to enjoy them. Just because I went a bit crazy with them, doesn’t mean others shouldn’t be able to have the choice to enjoy them too.

I finally broke down and ordered a new laptop last week and guess what? It’s an Apple!

I hemmed and hawed for months on which model to get, and waiting for the next big update, and blah, blah, blah and quite frankly I just got tired of not having one. My writing has been suffering because of this gap in my computer arsenal and I finally decided, fuck it, now is as good a time as any.

Both lines, the MacBook and the MacBook Pro were recently updated, and the mythical ultra portable doesn’t seem to be coming anytime soon (although now that I’ve bought one, it is probably a week away), so I went for it and placed my order last Wednesday and it already shipped on Friday.

I chose the black MacBook, with the only build to order option being extra RAM, I’ve doubled it to 2 gigs. I’ve gone with the stock 160gb 5400rpm hard drive, because I decided the extra speed was better than 40 extra gigs of storage – the 200gb model is only 4200rpm. It’s a Core2Duo, 2.16 and I topped it up with Apple Care.

I’m looking forward to its arrival, which should be in the next week, or less. They ship them from Shanghai, which is a long way from north London, but it’s still fairly impressive.

Once I get it, I’m going to carry it with me everywhere. If you invite me over, I’d bring it along, as long as you’ll let me access the internet on your wi-fi network! You see, it’s not just those little pills I’m addicted to, I’m hooked on the internet as well.

I did consider the MacBook Pro, but the significant additional cost was not justified by the “pro” features, in terms of my rather modest needs. Also, the 15.4 inch model is fairly big, in my opinion, to be lugging around, where the MacBook’s 13.3 size adds to it’s portability.

So that’s the last fortnight or so this hippy’s life. Wow, what a whirlwind of drama, emotion and big ticket purchases! I bet you can’t wait to see what happens to me next!

I’ll be back later in the week, with more BB bullshit, plus I’m going to start dealing with some of the requests you’ve all sent me. One subject has been most popular with all of you and…I’ll let you all know what is in my next entry!

Man oh man, I have been as sick as a dog all weekend!

A stomach virus, food poisoning or possibly it was a gypsy curse on my intestines; I’m not really certain, but I do know that I’m been expelling all manner of solid and liquid from both ends of my body since Saturday morning.

Nice!

The last time I was this unwell was while on holiday in Crete a few years ago. It was just as nasty then. All I’ve managed to keep down my gullet is water, and on Saturday even that was a problem.

I’m feeling a bit better today, but not enough to face any solid food, not even my current favourite from my local take-away, salt and chilli tofu! Just the thought of it is making me retch somewhat, so I must still be sick!

I’ve missed some work, which is never a good thing; as if I go sick, someone has to replace me. Imagine how much fun it is to replace me on short notice for a nightshift! It’s nearly impossible, which is why I always feel a little guilty on the rare occasions when I do phone in sick.

Oh enough about my health! I’m sick of being sick already! I hate being ill, it is just so boring. All I do is sleep, squirt liquid poo and barf a lot!

Ok, I’ve officially arrived in gross-land, population one sick hippy!

So how about that weather, eh? See, I’m changing the subject lest I offend again!

It’s still fairly warm and humid here in north London, though the nice weatherman told me it would less of both of those horrid qualities for the next couple of days. That’s good.

Ok, I don’t care about the weather either, but here in Britain, that’s what we talk about at awkward moments; the weather! That’s what we talk about all the time! It’s too cold, it’s too hot, it’s raining too much, it’s not raining enough! Moan, moan, moan!

Don’t you have any good news, you miserable hippy?

In truth, right now, I do not.

I guess I could geek out a bit. Why not?

I’m still digging my new Sony Bravia KDL-32V2000 LCD television very much! The picture on it is spectacular and the increased size has been a bonanza for my viewing pleasure. The V2000 range continues to garner rave reviews from the technical press and is widely seen as the best LCD television currently on the market! It rocks!

The images from my DVD player (over a component connection) and SKY+ (over RGB SCART) are fantastic and I am really looking forward to having some proper High-Def sources to feed into it in the future.

The obvious choice is SKY HD, but not yet. Why am I waiting?

Two reasons:

Firstly, the cost – I think it is too pricey. The box itself is 300 quid and they want another 50 or 60 pounds to install it. The installation fee is the real joke, as because I already have SKY+, it would be a straight box-swap, without any new cabling or a new dish. Talk about a rip-off!

As an existing SKY customer, they should be offering me some sort of incentive like a cheaper price. They’re not. Demand is high, so SKY have no reason to lower the price just yet. When the cost comes down, I’ll be very tempted.

The second reason has to do with reports I’m seeing on various forums from people who already have SKY HD. The boxes appear to be very problematic and laden with bugs.

I don’t want to replace my SKY+ box, which is 99% reliable with a new SKY HD box that is far less dependable. TV is too important to me to risk losing out on future recordings. Let them work the kinks out, then come talk to this hippy.

Don’t get me wrong, High-Def is very good and is worth the extra expense, just not yet. When the box comes down in price and is seen as a more robust piece of kit, then I would love to have it installed.

Another option for playing back High-Def material is a PC, or in my case, an Apple Mac. I connected my G4 iBook to the Bravia via a VGA input and was stunned by the quality of the image. My G4 is not beefy enough to play back High-Def, not even at 720p because the chip is too slow, but an Intel Mac Mini with a Core Duo would easily rise to that challenge.

So yes, my friends, the hippy is tempted to get a Mac Mini and turn it into my media hub. It could handle all my audio and video server needs with ease, including High-Def content downloaded from the internet.

I’m more than tempted, I’m going to buy one as soon as they refresh the line again, which could be anytime between now and the end of the summer. There will be a speed bump to the processor if nothing else, though Steve Jobs remarked at a recent Apple event that they know people want an Apple media-hub, so who really knows what the future may hold!

Match the Mac Mini with a wireless keyboard, wireless mouse and some additional storage and you’ve got one lean, mean, media serving machine that will let you surf the net from the sofa and access any content on my network. It sounds cool to me.

So there you have it, even while floored by some horrible tummy bug, I can still continue to plot and plan my all-new digital lifestyle.

Remember, if it weren’t for drugs and consumer purchases, my life would be nothing but an empty bottomless pit of deep despair. If your life is bleak and dreary too, no one would blame you for following my example!

I’m digging my new blog very much!

Ain’t it shiny? Don’t you just want to lick it?

If you do, I’ll charge you extra. This media whore don’t come cheap!

I especially like my new banner. Actually it’s my first and only banner. Ok, so I’m not a banner expert. I still dig it anyway!

My younger brother designed it based on my rather loose specifications. He did the whole site actually and could do yours too, for a modest, yet affordable fee. Contact me for details.

The new site uses something called Word Press, which seems like one powerful motherfucker of a system. I don’t think I even know half of what it does yet. It’s a brand new world for me!

I spent most of Thursday monged out of my skull on those Purple Ohms and to be honest, I can’t say I enjoyed it. The experience has put me off piperazines and LSA, which is a natural precursor of LSD.

For starters, I maxed out the dose, because my experience with these herbal highs is such that to get anywhere, you need to take as much as they recommend possible. Maybe that wasn’t wise, but fuck it, it was my birthday and the package promised “a shroom like experience.” Bullshit!

The speedier, piperazine, BZP, or TMMP aspects of it were as described previously, a bit speedy, slightly euphoric and pleasant enough, so I think what disagreed with me was the LSA containing Argryria Nervosa. I could be wrong.

Basically, it lasted for hours and the trippiness wasn’t pleasant, it was that anxious, restless sort of feeling that you get from acid cut with too much speed. I didn’t really enjoy it at all.

When Mrs. H got home from work, I had to have a nap, or at least lie in the dark for a couple of hours. She was not impressed to say the least.

I wouldn’t classify it as a “bad trip” but definitely an unpleasant experience that I do not plan on repeating. I get the feeling that a lot of these new herbal highs are just a mix of any old legal substance that makes you feel something and not a well-balanced mix of ingredients that yield a fantastic time.

Perhaps these new legal highs are still in their infancy and the real artisans of the industry haven’t created anything ideal yet. At least they are trying.

This little episode has made me realise just how good magic mushrooms were and what a tragedy it is that the British government took them away from us for no good reason other than to be seen to be legislating morality.

My beloved shrooms were safe, reliable and fun. You knew exactly what you were getting and if you were dosage aware, just how strong your trip would be. They were gentle on the system, with a gradual come up, comfortable peak and relaxed come-down. They were all natural, unprocessed and cheap. Up until last July, you could buy them from a choice of reputable retailers, online or on the high street.

I miss shrooms quite a bit and nothing that’s come along since even comes close. I’m sure if I put my mind to it, I could track some down now, but I don’t want to. They’re “Class A” and I’d rather not mess with that.

No, what I would like is for this government to do a U-turn. What I’d like to see is some European Court overturn the law! What I’d like is for shrooms to come back, fresh, legal and available to grown-up, responsible hippies like me!

But I live in the real world and that’s just not going to happen, is it?

Instead, people are going to keep looking for that next big thing. And you know what, that next big thing might be far worse than shrooms and it wouldn’t have come on the market if shrooms were still available!

According to a recent report I saw on SKY NEWS, in this country alone, the legal high market is in the region of 10 million pounds per year! That’s a shitload of money; it’s a massive market and I predict it will expand in the coming years in ways none of us can imagine!

And yes, I’ll be here to test drive these new substances for you! Maybe I’ll find one even better than shrooms!

Somehow I doubt that too!