This was originally done by Camper Van Beethoven but this cover done by GoldRush is so good I think it’s better than the original.

     Even as a child I knew this time would come when much in the past would be gone by and I would miss it.  Occasionally I’ll have dreams where I’ll be back in my childhood and re-experience it.  My childhood was less than optimal in many ways, yet there is much from that time that I miss and usually those dreams omit the negative parts of the past and only feature the positive parts.

     One aspect of the Bible’s description of heaven that deeply troubles me is that it tells us that people who don’t make it, we won’t remember them.  It seems on this planet God is very deeply against interfering with free will, yet cutting out a portion of my memories seems like the ultimate violation.  I’m not at all comfortable with that, it seems like omitting part of the truth is living a lie and God is not supposed to be about lies.

     No sunshine today, gray and light fog in Shoreline, WA.

     Mei is the third Doberman we’ve had.  Unlike the other two before her, she is super-flexible.  She can bend her head back 180 degrees.  Here she has her head and back legs in one direction, front paws in the other, and appears to be perfectly comfortable in this position.

     Carl was supposed to take her to get her claws ground down Saturday, then did come Sunday but the place was closed, then was supposed to come again today, but hasn’t. Meanwhile she is shredding me.

     The reason we can’t end the war on drugs is that if we did so then we’d have to fund the CIA fully with tax dollars.

     If we funded the CIA fully with tax dollars, the CIA would be forced to be accountable to congress and indirectly to citizens.

     Since that can’t happen in todays world, neither can an end to the drug war which keeps drug prices high enough that thousands of people are willing to kill for market share and the CIA can continue to generate sufficient revenue to fund all of it’s off the book projects such as the overthrow of foreign governments.

     Prohibition was an expensive and failed experiment, and so is the war on drugs.  In Washington State, more than a year after marijuana was legalized, the results have been very positive.  In Portugal where ALL drugs have been decriminalized since 2000, it has been a very successful experiment and one that should be replicated here.

     One very negative effect of the drug war here is that many substances which have substantial medical potential get placed on schedule one in spite of meeting NONE of the requirements of being on that schedule and can’t even be studied in the United States.

     A good example are hallucinogenics.  Hallucinogenics work by increasing serotonin often selectively in a way that doesn’t cause serotonin syndrome as excessive SSRIs can.  At sub-hallucinogenic doses they can be extremely effective as antidepressants and generally lift mood, creativity, and functionality in depressive individuals.  The increase in serotonin also causes an increase in neurogenesis, the creation of new neurons in the brain. They can also be very effective at eliminating addictions to other substances ranging from alcohol to heroin.

     Some hallucinogenics, particularly psilocybin, have been shown to increase neurogenesis in the adult hippocampus resulting in improvements in memory and mood, and the effects are not just immediate but long term in nature.

     Likewise, cannabinoids have been shown to promote neurogenesis.

     There are many other substances that end up on schedule 1 that clearly have medical uses but these can’t be adequately proven because schedule 1 prevents even research uses.  Some of these substances might help people with serious diseases such as Parkinsons, Alzheimers, and other forms of dementia if they could be studied.  Even where these substances can’t be used because of side effects, often subtle tweaking of molecules can eliminate those but this is prevented by the analog drugs act.

    With a rapidly aging population, cures and prevention of dementia in the elderly should be a priority.  Our current drug laws place a significant restraint in finding and developing these cures.

    Another area where some of these substances may have application is in the arena of improving fluid intelligence and brain plasticity.  As we age these things decline, but our environment is changing rapidly and the need for these capacities is greater than ever.  We often say that old people are set in their ways.  What this really means is that they have a difficult time creating new memories and eliminating outdated information.  Some of these substances show great promise in those areas.

     Our current drug policies are insane.  End the needless violence, death, and inability for research to be conducted.  End the break-up of families caused by people being imprisoned for possessing a substance.  This is NOT something that should be happening in the land of the “free”.

     Stomach and intestinal discomfort again last night which has been a frequent experience since the course of Doxycycline.

     And with those have come disoriented strange nightmares again.  Between 1978 and 1995, I worked for Pacific Northwest Bell / US West / Qwest (now eaten by CenturyLink).  I’ve been gone from that company for twenty years, still it haunts me.

     In downtown Seattle, they had three buildings, 1101 Forth Avenue (now a Hotel), 1122 Third Avenue (this used to be known as “Main” and housed much of the central office equipment for the downtown area), and 1200 Third Avenue (which I believe is now some sort of retail complex).

     The three buildings were connected by underground tunnels.  Inside the tunnels there were cables on the wall connecting equipment in one building to another.

     The tunnels also had some mysterious doors my key did not open.  Early on I had a key that would open any central office doors and most other things but not these.  I later found out one of them was to the battery room for part of the complex, which was odd, as I had access to the power room of every other central office.  Another lead down to the train tunnel that goes under Seattle.

     But there were others that remained a mystery.  Some of the old timers told me there was a nuclear reactor run by the military down there but I think they were just messing with me.  There may well have been some military installation as many military circuits ran through the facility and the train tunnel provided a perfect supply route that allowed loading and unloading of cargo totally incognito.

     Anyway, in this dream, I was back at the telephone company but when I went into one building and then attempted to use a tunnel to get to another, everything had been re-routed and I came up in strange buildings that were unfamiliar, they had ground level entrances onto streets that were unfamiliar, and I was totally lost and disoriented.  And oddly in downtown Seattle it seemed completely devoid of humans that could assist.

     It was almost as if I went down into the tunnels in one reality and came back out in some parallel but very different reality.

     Had a strange dream where I was on the side of a steep gravelly mountain side.  At the bottom of the mountain side there was a crystal clear blue lake.

     I was riding a surfboard down the mountain side, it slid over loose gravel, and into the lake at the bottom.

     Nice to be blessed with a fun non-nightmarish dream for a change.