Of renunciation and dangerous substances

[Ted Samsel]

Penny quotes thusly: 
> 
> _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."

Ah yes. Reminds me of when (back around 1971 or so) I realized that
one could trade a fundamentalist Protestant guilt for an equally
crippling political guilt. Garrison Keillor made his bundle with 
that as a schtick.

Ted Samsel....tejas at infi.net
   "do the boogie woogie in the South American way"
                           Rhumba Boogie- Hank Snow (1955)