Of renunciation and dangerous substances

[MASCARO at humnet.ucla.edu]

Penny provides a double barrel of goodies w/ her sharp VINELAND quotes, 
simultaneously illuminating the drug thread AND picking up Steely's overtossed 
gauntlet--hey, Steelish One--even YOU must be pleased by these passages from a book you 
continually denigrate--wrongly.  Way to go Penny.

john m


Penny quotes:
>
>_Vineland_, p. 229:
>
>Rex himself saw the Revolution as a kind of progressive
>abstinence, in which you began by giving up acid and pot,
>then tobacco, alcohol, sweets -- you kept cutting down on
>sleep, doing with less, you broke up with lovers, avoided
>sex, after a while even gave up masturbating -- as the
>enemy's attention grew more concentrated, you gave up
>your privacy, freedom of movement, access to money, with
>the looming promise always of jail and the final forms of
>abstinence from any life at all free from pain.
>
>p. 313:
>
>"Just please go careful, Zoyd.  'Cause soon they're gonna be
>coming after everything, not just drugs, but beer, cigarettes,
>sugar, salt, fat, you name it, anything that could remotely
>please any of your senses, because they need to control all
>that.  And they will."
>"Fat Police?"
>"Perfume Police.  Tube Police.  Music Police.  Good Healthy
>Shit Police.  Best to renounce everything now, get a head
>start."
>
>