Fuck you show! What are you doing to me show? This is for children? What the fuck! Where are the robots, show? God damn it!

Neo Genesis Evangelion isn't so much a TV series as a mind rape you subject yourself to for several hours on end. You scream at it. You hate it for what it's done to you. You hate it for what it's done to Japanese children. You really want to hug them.

This has been making the rounds on my Facebook feed and it definitely deserved to be posted here. In the U.K., the country's top advisor on drugs was recently fired for criticizing the country's drug laws. Basically, he was saying that drug policy should reflect the actual harmfulness of the drugs they police, as measured by the handy table in the article.

The table ranks 20 substances by a rating assigned by researches based on harmfulness to society and physical being and the risk of addictiveness. Heroin is first, alcohol fifth, weed 11th, ecstasy third from the bottom and LSD 14th. Of course, this reflects what a lot of researchers have been saying about some of the drugs on the list for years, and maybe isn't that much of new information.

Perhaps most interesting to me, mostly because I just wrote a blog post about it, and because I'm starting to become more interested in the implications of the drug and dance culture, is the ranking given to ecstasy. I'm thinking that ranking, at first glance, seems a little low. Chemically, ecstasy is definitely not addictive. But behaviourally, it's definitely more addictive, and more potentially damaging than weed. That being said, the list reflects an interesting dynamic that I've been thinking a lot about: if you're going to be using (or abusing) a substance to have a good time in a dance environment, which is worse for? Ecstasy or alcohol?

Just when you thought autotuned music couldn't possibly get any worse.

Attack Attack is basically Alexisonfire, except with the "hardcore" parts dirtier and harder to understand and the singing parts autotuned. You'll want to watch to the 2:46 mark or so for the inexplicable J-popish keyboard breakdown.

In a book I'm reading, I read those two words together and then decided that was possibly the best title you could ever take to the grave. Anarchist-millionaire.

They were attached to the name "John Gilmore" and he was egging on Jon Postel to transfer the root authority from under the U.S. government's control to Postel's.

Gilmore made his money from being the fifth employee of Sun Microsystems and used it to help out free software, GNU and sue the FAA and department of justice.

So I had a time at the 7-11 tonight. You'd think that having memorable events at a 7-11 probably wouldn't happen, unless you've been to a 7-11 during the wee morning hours. Besides the usually inebriated (myself included) clientele, you get the night shift employees.

I usually expect maybe interesting conversation from the late night employees and not so stellar service. But this time around, I ran into something that was somewhat unbelievable. Apparently the one debit machine wasn't working, so the Chinese lady working the till put up a paper sign with plainly spelled English saying that the debit machine doesn't work, so that till was cash only. When I walked up to the till, she pointed to the sign, I nodded I understood. She re-explained the sign in broken English and I nodded I understood again. Finally, she scanned in my items and I paid.

Probably a fairly common exchange at more than just 7-11s. Maybe a little frustrating, sure, but nothing that we can't work through. Now that got me thinking, if places like 7-11 and McDonald's put up buttons on their employees saying "Hi, I'm training, please be patient" or whatever, why can't they put up buttons on their employees saying "Hi, I'm learning English, please be patient"?

Frequenting dance clubs and being around E quite a bit makes you start to wonder what it does physically to your body over the long term. Though I really doubt that E or MDMA will ever be legalized, the way it operates now, it's in a state of accepted use in certain places. In Edmonton, the Y Afterhours club is basically an E bar. They don't let you sell it in there, in fact if they catch you, you're gone. They don't sell it to you themselves, but it's there.  They are also open all-night, after every other bar is closed and sell only energy drinks, water, gatorade and candy. So that's kind of a hint.

But the police don't bust in every night to search for drugs, though I'm sure they know what goes on. It just happens, if people want to find it. And everyone is happy either in willful ignorance or in doing as much as they feel like to discourage it's use without really making it a criminal issue.

For developed electronic music scenes, this seems to be the way things are going as far as the legal tolerance for E.

Found this link through a friend about the use of high grade meth as a recreational drug for the upper class.

It's a fairly fascinating look at a drug trip from the outside-in, generally, and an incredible look at a drug that I had not really heard of. Does this article make me want to try it? Probably. I think I was mostly sold on the Vegas idea. Ever since I went to Vegas a few months back, I've kind of been itching to get back, drugs or not. In the article, they buy some last minute tickets and fly out there.

More generally, it sounds like a lot of effort and smoking to keep the high going. There's a good chance that because they regularly do it, they might be addicted. By the end of it, they're pretty burned out. Though I guess anyone would be after partying for 72 hours straight. Who knows if this is any worse than a significant E binge.

Yeah, there's a lot of "roll'd" videos on the internet these days. But do any of them make you feel like your brain is breaking like this one does?

If you don't stick around until the 2:00 mark or so, you'll be disappointed.

I spent a long time one night listening to the song Mack the Knife over and over again. I think I listened to the Bobby Darin version 10 times. Now I don’t quite remember what compelled me to do that, but the important thing is it led me to read up on the dude and realize that he lived a pretty fucked up life.

At an early age, he overheard his doctor telling his mom that he’d be surprised if he lived to the age of 17. He did live to 37, but he was sick and crippled by rheumatic fever as a child. Also, who he thought was his mom was actually his grandmother and who he thought was his sister was actually his mom. He found this out when he was in his 30s. Yeah.

Darin hit it big as a teen idol, with songs like “Dream Lover,” but because of his poor health, he didn’t really jump into the illicit excesses available to stars. Except he apparently got around. He employed his “brother-in-law” Charlie (who was actually his stepfather, he never found out who his real father was) as a gofer. Charlie got first shot at the fans and showgirls, then Darin would strut into the room buck naked and say, “Now how about some of this, baby?” (at least, according to this reposted GQ article.) Darin’s conquests didn’t stop with fans. Once, a recently married member of his touring band brought his new wife along with him on a Darin train tour. The marriage was brought to an abrupt end after the touring musician found his wife naked in his compartment with Darin.