Happy Eating

Coffee
Yogurt and Rye Ganjacakes with Blueberry Sauce
Tea
Collard Greens
Ham
"Dressin' "
Tea
Curry Spiced French Lentil Soup
Rolls
Mashed Potatoes
String Beans
Hot Buttered Rum
Pumpkin Pie with Vanilla Ice Cream
Two Buck Chuck

...all in all a very successful Thanksgiving.

I broke my glasses, and when I fixed them the world looked different.

Every person is God in disguise. Or whatever you want to call him/her/it. God, Goddess, Adonai, the Force, V.A.L.I.S., Dee, whatever. Those are a lot of words for the same thing. The point is that we all carry it within ourselves, always. I am God, you are God, every person I serve coffee to at work is God. Serving coffee becomes sacred because it is being done by God, for God. What you do is holy, because it is being done. Here. Now.

Space Cakes and Time Travel

About two hours after ingesting the butter (by way of toast), I found myself downstairs in my room. I wasn't sure exactly when I had left the living room, but it didn't really matter. What mattered then was that I was sitting, cross legged, in the center of my room. The lights were off and something really trippy was playing in the background. The more I fell back into myself the more details became clear to me. I realized that I had been sitting there for about twenty minutes, which seemed like a very long time. I sat for a few minutes more, absorbing the sounds, the feeling of my muscles as a began to move them around. Then I got up, put on a coat and went out to the back porch. I sat down in the rocking chair and light a cigarette, my fingers all trembly from the cold. I rocked and smoked for about five minutes until I had to put out the cigarette. I couldn't stand to hold it any longer. As I continued to rock I realized that not only was the chair creaking, I was anticipating the creaks. Very softly I explained to myself that I needed to stop waiting, and just let those creaks happen. "Stop anticipating," I said. "Just be here, now." And I rocked. And each moment in the rocking chair turned into the first time I had experienced motion. Each moment was brand new. It was the first time I had heard wood creak, the first time I had rocked back and teetered on the edge between falling and rocking forward. I sat in that chair for eternity and experienced everything for the first time, over and over, at every moment.

That paragraph is from the first time I infused THC into butter and ate it. It wasn't unpleasant, as some people say it can be. It was very, very intense. Time and reality started doing back flips and contortionist stuff that belong only in Cirque du Soleil. It was interesting, but I wasn't sure that I'd ever try it again. Well, Saturday night my neighbor came over bearing a large plastic shopping bag. It was full of trimmings: stems, leaves, everything but bud. He gave it to us, saying that he had no use for it. We didn't really think that we'd get anything good out of the bag. Smoked it wouldn't have done anything at all. But butter....So yesterday I went to the store and bought a half pound of butter. Since we figured we were working with half-assed stuff we changed the proportions. Normally, it seems, you use an ounce of cannabis per pound of butter. So we used an ounce per half pound. After three hours of simmering water, butter and weed, the entire house smelled like pot. But we had a lovely bowl of bright green liquid. So I cooled it, skimmed the butter off the top and proceeded to make some really yummy cookies. And once again, time stopped.

Mmm, Cookies!
Basically, take your standard chocolate chip cookie recipe. Mix up your green butter, sugar and eggs. Add flour, vanilla, baking soda, whatever it calls for. But use really good chocolate chips, and add dried fruit (I used raisins and cranberries) and a lot of nuts (pecans, almonds and walnuts went into mine). Your batter will be a very light shade of green. And it might taste a bit like grass. But once baked all the other goodies in your cookies will overpower that taste. Enjoy.
But please, be careful. Eat two or three and wait a bit. You will want to munch on something, but make sure it isn't laced with THC as well. Eating too much will totally mess you up. Make sure that you really need another cookie before you eat one. I had a lot, probably around seven. I think five would have been sufficient for a good trip. So, yeah...just keep that in mind.

The Fountainhead; Section Three, Chapter 14, Pages 660 through 670*

[Peter] Keating lifted his head. He sat at a littered table, bent under a squat lamp that gave poor light; he was doing a crossword puzzle...
"Hello Ellsworth," he said, smiling. He leaned forward to rise, but forgot the effort, halfway...The smile went, not quite completed. It had been an instinct of memory.
"Hello Ellsworth," he repeated helplessly.
[Ellsworth] Toohey stood before him, examining the room, the table, with curiosity.
"Not very talkative these days, are you, Peter? Not very sociable?"
"I wanted to see you Ellsworth. I wanted to talk to you."
Toohey grasped a chair by the back, swung it through the air, in a broad circle like a flourish, planted it by the table and sat down.
"Well, that's what I came here for," he said. "To hear you talk."
Keating said nothing.
"Well?"
"I'm so tired Ellsworth...I'm glad you came."
"Think you can get away with it? ...The hermit act? The great penance?"
"What do you want?"
"...I'll just tell you the truth...You make me sick. Can't you take the truth? No, you want your sugar-coating...You're a complete success, Peter, as far as I am concerned. But at times I want to turn away from the sight of my successes."
Keating stood by the dresser, his shoulders slumped, his eyes empty.
"You make me sick," said Toohey. "God, how you make me sick, all you hypocritical sentimentalists! You go along with me , you spout what I teach you, you profit by it-but you haven't the grace to admit to yourself what you're doing. You turn green when you see the truth. I suppose that's in the nature of your natures and that's precisely my chief weapon-but God! I get tired of it."
"What do you...want...Ellsworth?"
"Power, Petey."
Toohey was smiling, almost indifferently.
"You...always said..." Keating began thickly, and stopped.
"I've always said that. Clearly, precisely and openly. It's not my fault if you couldn't hear. You could, of course. You didn't want to. Which was safer than deafness-for me. I said I intended to rule...I shall rule."
"Whom...?"
"You. The world. It's only a matter of discovering the lever. If you learn how to rule a single man's soul, you can get to the rest of mankind...The soul, Peter, is that which can't be ruled. It must be broken. Drive a wedge in, get your fingers on it-and the man is yours. You won't need a whip-he'll bring it to you and ask to be whipped. Set him in reverse-and his own mechanism will do the work for you. Use him against himself. Want to know how it's done? See if I ever lied to you. See if you haven't heard all this for years, but didn't want to hear, and the fault is yours, not mine. There are many ways. Here's one. Make man feel small. Make him feel guilty. Kill his aspiration and integrity. That's difficult. The worst among you gropes for an ideal in his own twisted way. Kill integrity by internal corruption...To preserve one's integrity is a hard battle. Why preserve that which one knows to be corrupt already? His soul gives up it's self-respect. You've got him. He'll obey. He'll be glad to obey-because he can't trust himself, he feels uncertain, he feels unclean. That's one way...Here's another way. This is most important. Don't allow men to be happy. Happiness is self-contained and self-sufficient. Happy men have no time and no use for you. Happy men are free men. So kill their joy in living. Take away from them what is dear or important to them. Never let them have what they want. Make them feel that the mere fact of a personal desire is evil. Bring them to a state where saying 'I want' is no longer a natural right, but a shameful admission...Unhappy men will come to you. They'll need you. They'll come for consolation, for support, for escape...Empty man's soul-and the space is yours to fill. I don't see why you should look so shocked, Peter. This is the oldest one of all. Look back at history. Look at any great system of ethics...Didn't they all preach the sacrifice of personal joy? Haven't you been able to catch their theme song-'Give up, give up, give up'?...We've tied happiness to guilt...Of course, you must dress it up. You must tell people that they'll achieve a superior kind of happiness by giving up everything that makes them happy. You don't have to be too clear about it. Use big words...Internal corruption, Peter. That's the oldest one of all. The farce has been going on for centuries and men still fall for it. Yet the test should be so simple: just listen to any prophet and if you hear him speak of sacrifice-run...It stands to reason that where there's sacrifice, there's someone collecting sacrificial offerings...The man who speaks of sacrifice speaks of slaves and masters. And intends to be the master."
...Keating had sat down on the floor, by the side of the dresser; he had felt tired and simply folded his legs.
"Peter, you've heard all this. You've seen me practicing it...You have no right to sit there and stare at me with the virtuous superiority of being shocked. You're in on it."
"Ellsworth...you're..."
"Insane? Afraid to say it? There you sit and the word's written all over you, your last hope. Insane?...Can't you see past the guff?...Give up your soul...give it up, give it up, give it up...My technique, Peter. Offer poison as food and poison as antidote. Go fancy on the trimmings, but hang on to the main objective...Kill the individual. Kill man's soul. The rest will follow automatically."
Keating sat on the floor, his legs spread out. He listed one hand and studied his finger tips, then put it to his mouth and bit off a hangnail. But the movement was deceptive; the man was reduced to a single sense, the sense of hearing, and Toohey knew that no answer could be expected.
Keating waited obediently; it seemed to make no difference...
Toohey put his hands on the arms of the chair, then lifted his palms, from the wrists, and clasped the wood again, a little slap of resigned finality. He pushed himself to his feet.
Keating lifted his head. His voice had the quality of a down payment on terror; it was not frightened, but held the advance echoes of the next hour to come:
"Don't go Ellsworth."
Toohey stood over him, and laughed softly.
"That's the answer, Peter. That's my proof. You know me for what I am, you know what I've done to you, you have no illusions of virtue left. But you can't leave me and you'll never be able to leave me. You've obeyed me in the name of ideals. You'll go on obeying me without ideals. Because that's all you're good for now....Good night, Peter."

*vastly edited.