This particular story starts in the continued discussion of a particular website, Slate, on a particular drug, nicotine. Perusing their archives one day, a few heretofore unknown facts became clear: 1. the Americans are fucking around with cigarette laws again; 2. There is a buzz about "harm reduction" methods, a long-time standby of the med-weed camp; and 3. Obama is fighting an publicly admitted nicotine addiction.
As odd and partially encouraging to the drug war as some of these facts were, they weren't even the highlight of the session. What struck most odd was the article context-linked at the bottom of one of the stories--one about junk food and taxes. If an article about junk food in a populist magazine doesn't sound particularly new and intriguing, well, it wasn't; what was, though, was the discussion surrounding the proposed new treatment and classification of junk food--specifically, soda pop--by the FDA.
I returned the comment with a fairly-confused look and an eventual "Thank You," as Shambhala would be the last place where I'd expect to receive a compliment for a shirt with art from progressive Metal group Tool on it. After all, this is a festival dedicated to cultivating peace, love and understanding through generally-uplifting electronic music; even Tool's socially-conscious and very trippy guitar-driven sounds would seem out of place if played through any sound system there. Granted, given the heavy psychedelic content of both Tool's music and that particular festival, the probability of finding at least one Tool fan would be likely rather high, especially in such a diverse crowd.
But it got weirder than merely being complimented on my rather-Metal shirt at a rather-Trance-y festival; both myself and those I camped with noticed the trend all weekend long: there were Tool t-shirts everywhere. What on God's Green Earth were all these metal heads doing at Shambhala?
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