Asshole

[wood jim]

--- Doug Millison <DMillison at ftmg.net> wrote:
> Thanks, Tim, but it's not really worth the effort to
> argue with yet another
> anonymous asshole who shows up to parrot MalignD's
> and jbor's and Mackin's
> criticisms of everything I post -- it's a
> longstanding pattern that whenever
> that crew starts attacking my posts a bunch of new,
> anonymous jerks arrives
> to join in. They are not interested in facts, they
> just want attention and
> to keep the argument going.  
> 


Some folks believe Pynchon also may have known about
the CIA's research with
LSD, looking for possible military and
counter-intelligence uses, and that
this is reflected in his work, especially GR. 

The Tupperware puts Oedipa squarely in suburbia (and
not the old money, high
brow enclaves south of San Francisco, either) but
she's not a traditional
60s housewife.  No kids, for one thing.  Through Mucho
she's plugged into
the rock and roll scene that scared most traditional
60s housewives to
death.  Add a psychiatrist who's dispensing LSD and
that puts Oedipa in a
very select circle.  Given the Peninsula location
where she lives, it's
possible that Pynchon had in mind the LSD sub-culture
that centered on Menlo
Park, where folks like Ken Kesey first encountered LSD
in officially
sanctioned research programs, and where a few
in-the-know psychiatrists and
others had access to LSD. Recall that as Pynchon is
writing COL49, LSD is
still very much an underground phenomenon (COL49 is
published in '66) , it
didn't break out as a widely known thing until the
Summer of Love.  And the
fact that some psychiatrists (and the CIA) were using
LSD was never common
knowledge (although LSD's history was exposed in
underground newspapers;
psychedelic mushrooms had received some short-lived
publicity earlier, in
particular a famous article in Life magazine brought
the Mexican mushroom
cult some international attention that was largely
forgotten until LSD broke
out as a big story in '67, as I recall it) until much
later.  With regard to
LSD, Pynchon is pointing to knowledge that was, in
fact, suppressed and
intentionally kept secret, and which was just
beginning to seep out into the
broader culture at the time he's writing COL49. So,
the atmosphere of
secrecy and revelation available only to an initiated
elite in this novel is
not a complete fabrication or mere literary game --
it's inextricably part
of the community of people who knew anything at all
about LSD in the early
'60s.

I'd bet my next paycheck that the
vast majority of  Americans didn't know a thing about
hippies (or the drugs
they were taking) until Time magazine made the Summer
of Love a cover story
in '67





And this guy has the audacity to call me an asshole. 



I was minding my own business, posting away, Peirce
and Barfield &..., Freud, Feminism, the kind of stuff
that one might expect, cfa was replying, but  the
Millison posts
were making me nervous, the conspiracy stuff kept
coming and it seemed to be overwhelming the discussion
and a few old timers were doing their best to plug the
holes in the dyke, filling sand bags and telling a
joke or two to ease the tension, but the 
torrent only raged more so. 

The book, the one that most people would recognize as
mostly bull, says, 

"February 1965 - First big surge of street acid" 

http://www.levity.com/aciddreams/timeline.html

But LSD was all over the Streets long before 1967. 
And it was all over the Press as well. By 1967 it was
household word, it was on everthing from the TV
program Dragnet 

http://coptv.about.com/library/episodes/blepdragnet1.htm?iam=dpile&terms=%2BLSD+%2BTV

        ("Dragnet" actually covered some very tough
issues
         during its two television runs as well. When
TV Guide
         and Nick at Nite chose the "100 Greatest
Episodes of All
         Time," it was no surprise to see "Dragnet"'s
1967 "Blue
         Boy" episode (aka "The LSD Story") on the
list. This
         show, dealing with LSD use among Los Angeles
teens,
         marked the return of "Dragnet" after an
eight-year
         absence, and also marked a move toward more
         hard-boiled episodes. ) 

http://mysterynet.com/tv/profiles/dragnet/

to the covers of popular  magazines. It didn't get
there over night. 

The drug is usually referred to as LSD but has also
been called "25"
    (apparently from LSD-25). In the Boston area the
designation "crackers"
    (from animal crackers) was used, and when people
considered obtaining
    the drug they often stated, "Let's get some
coffee," because the drug was
    frequently acquired in coffee houses. 5 

The first clandestinely synthesized LSD, according to
knowledgeable sources, was
of excellent purity and quality. Excellent
black-market LSD is also available today.
But in addition, the market since 1963 has been
flooded with adulterated LSD,
contaminated LSD, improperly synthesized LSD
containing a variety of related
substances whose effects are little known, and LSD of
unknown dosage. It is
impossible to determine how many of the adverse
reactions noted after 1962 were
traceable to these factors.

That's 1962! 

AND 

There is adequate reason to believe that such
hospitalizations and accidents did in
fact occur with markedly increased frequency from 1962
until about 1969. 

http://www.ukcia.org/lib/cunion/cu51.htm




My brother got his LSD in NYC in 1961. 


http://www.druglibrary.org/Schaffer/Library/studies/cu/CU50.html

In 1963 it was on sugar cubes in coffee houses in
NYC's Village. 


http://oldies.about.com/library/weekly/aa062799.htm?iam=dpile&terms=%2Blsd+%2B1960s

Another timeline: 

http://www.erowid.org/chemicals/lsd/lsd_timeline.php3#Note2

1963 LSD first appears on the streets (liquid on sugar
cubes). Articles about LSD first appear in mainstream
media (Look, Saturday Evening Post).  2    

Say, what do you know, the author cites 'Acid Dreams'
(not a very good book) 

2 . 'Acid Dreams: The CIA, LSD and the Sixties
Rebellion', by Martin a. Lee and Bruce Shlain. 

And by 

Mar 25, 1966
                Life publishes cover article on LSD.
"LSD: The
                Exploding Threat of the Mind Drug that
Got Out of
                Control".     


The Snitch System: 

 
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/news/nation-world/html98/altlear_19990701.html

This is just a few things I found seraching the
internet. But I'll be back on Tuesday with more. 



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