VLVL 4: War, politics and love

[pynchonoid]

gumbo: 
> Well, we could examine "LSD was/is good," I suppose.

LSD is a tool that can and has been used for both good
(successful treatment of Cary Grant's alcoholism, to
name one of my favorite examples) and for evil (CIA
using it to drive unsuspecting folks crazy in an
effort to find a new weapon to use in the Cold War),
or just for BUSINESS (sold for profit by some very
unsavory characters by the time the first LSD boom was
coming to an end in the '70s).

"Banal" is not the word to describe the current
conversation about LSD among scientists, government
officials, and others.  LSD is after all a unique and
exotic substance that helps to trigger dramatic
personal experiences -- I think fq may actually know
something about that. Given the resurgence of interest
in LSD and other entheogens, the recommencement of
research with LSD and other entheogens,  the current
boom in black market sales and use of LSD and other
entheogens, the new debate about what it is and what
it does and what might be possible with LS, it's
hardly "banal" ("lacking originality, freshness, or
novelty") -- au contraire, it's a lively area of new
research, study, and discussion (see the MAPS website
for more on that, <http://www.maps.org/>, or catch
that NPR documentary I mentioned in an earlier post). 

While it may not carry any weight among a few
particpants in this forum, LSD is also something that
Pynchon thought worthy of inclusion in _Vineland_, so
if for no other reason it's a legitimate, and imo
interesting, topic for discussion here. More so than
the NP Nabokov discussion, imo.

Banal is a word that fq appears to know how to spell,
or at least can copy correctly, even if fq doesn't
know quite what it means, as is so often the case with
the vocabulary that appears in fq's posts.  Or -- not
entirely out of the realm of possibility, no matter
how improbable--  perhaps fq is making a pun, just
trying to B anal in pursuing an ongoing obsession with
Doug (and, hey, guilty as charged for responding to a
garden-variety Internet troll).

Main Entry:	ba·nal   
Pronunciation:	b&-'nal, ba-, -'n[a']l; bA-'nal;
'bA-n&l
Function:	adjective
Etymology:	French, from Middle French, of compulsory
feudal service, possessed in common, commonplace, from
ban
Date:	1840
: lacking originality, freshness, or novelty : TRITE
synonym see INSIPID
- ba·nal·i·ty  /b&-'na-l&-tE also bA- or ba-/ noun
- ba·nal·ize  /b&-'na-"lIz, ba-, -'n[a']-; bA-'na-;
'bA-n&l-"Iz/ transitive verb
- ba·nal·ly  /b&-'nal-lE, ba-, -'n[a']l-; bA-'nal-;
'bA-n&l-(l)E/ adverb 

<http://m-w.com/cgi-bin/dictionary>

And, T -- don't forget to write if you get WORK...



__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! SiteBuilder - Free, easy-to-use web site design software
http://sitebuilder.yahoo.com