Chili

Tortilla chips

shredded cheese

shredded lettuce

optional, though you should include something from this list to make it more interesting:

chopped cilantro

green onions

nacho veggies (onions, tomato, olives)

salsa

sour cream

Take a big serving platter (or a regular plate if you’re all by your lonesome), put down a layer of tortilla chips. Top with shredded cheese. Spread hot chili over top of that. Top with more cheese, then your shredded lettuce mixed with your optional cilantro (my favorite part), green onions and nacho veggies. Serve with sides of salsa and sour cream.

My liquor cabinet. I already drank all my Irish Cream, frangelico and Kahlua

This is my favorite drink recipe that I concocted. I haven’t had one in a while because I’m trying to save money.

1 part Irish Cream

1 part Frangelico

1 part Kahlua

1 part Soy Milk (or regular milk for those anti-soy folks)

optional: 1 part hennessy (if you like it a bit stronger)

Combine over large ice cubes. I prefer soy milk over regular milk because it’s easier on the stomach and doesn’t distract from the other flavors, but most normal people will probably prefer regular milk or–if you’re hard core–cream.

The four ingredients can be mixed in any combination; they don’t need to be even or you can leave out either the Frangelico or Kahlua and it will still be delicious.

I tried this once with a little bit of Peach Schnapps. That turned out well, however, I also tried a bit of Aftershock in this drink and that did NOT turn out well.

Certainly you can’t say video games are on the same level as something like crank, but if you compare them with marijuana, you’ll see video games kill more people (though admittedly the numbers are still quite low) and suck away more physical time away from individuals. I can’t help but wonder if many people feel that video game and television addiction is not a real problem because it’s not illegal. Cops aren’t willing to point guns at people and destroy their lives over video games, so therefore they can’t be a real problem.

The day after hearing the guy talking about his class, I saw that Hulu had the first five comlete seasons of Lost. I’d tried watching it once and found the first episode to be simple violence porn that somehow didn’t hit me as anything interesting. This time I gave it another chance and have found myself completely addicted to Lost. I’m not sure if I’m subconsciously trying to prove the guy wrong or what.

I’ve been addicted to other television shows in the past, when I’d get them from Netflix or download the torrents. I’ve been addicted to shows like Farscape, The Sopranos, Firefly, 24, Star Trek Enterprise, Arrested Development and probably a few others that I can’t think of, but Lost has just a little stronger pull. I’m already on the third season and it’s this endless string of underground lairs, secret experiments, mysterious fires, lies and deceit, capturing, torturing and mysteries that go on and on and on in an endless tease of questions. I watch one episode after another, and even now am trying to divide my attention between this entry and yet another episode. It’s sucking my life away and my only consolation is that it will end at the sixth season… but there will always be another amazingly entertaining show to get sucked into.

So I’ve been thinking about why television is a bad influence this last week and have read a few arguments on the web. Fortunately a few have pointed out the importance of avoiding over-simplification and claiming that all television or video games are bad, but what I didn’t hear much of was the issue of the sheer volume of time that these activities steal away from people.

So by embedding this in my post am I considered an enabler now? Damn you Hulu for sucking my life away!

My first instinct was to side with the judge and if not for my anarchist ideals, I wouldn’t have thought twice about this. People really shouldn’t be running red lights, and $20, which for me represents barely more than half an hour’s work, or even $100 seems like an insignificant sum in exchange for putting people’s lives in danger for someone’s impatience.

My anarchist side, however, sees a couple problems. First is that half of these people, if not more, are not running red lights on purpose. Like most people, they had no intention of doing anything wrong, and would not choose to do it again, with or without the ticket. Accidents happen and people make mistakes. The judge knew this. We all know this. If this weren’t true, we could just raise the price of a ticket to a thousand dollars, maybe throw in a merciless beating from a police officer and we could put an end to people running red lights once and for all. Ultimately, tickets are not intended to promote public safety. They are intended to make a profit.

The other issue is the differences in wages and salaries. The judge is probably paid a good $140,000 a year to pass judgment over the lives of others and act like he knows the difference between right and wrong better than everyone else. $100 is completely fair to him. It’s less than a slap on the wrist. But he forgets—or refuses to admit—that many people do not make $140,000 a year. Just six years ago I would work a full shift, finding myself sticky with sweat, and have barely fifty bucks to show for it. Some people work for that kind of pay and have kids to feed. A $100 loss can cause very real problems for those people. The average judge simply can’t understand that, and sometimes I can’t understand it either, after just a few years of making good wages. Working for a living seems like a whole different world, so I can understand how judges and lawyers can so easily lose all compassion for the difficulties that normal people face. This is just one of many reasons I believe the core concepts of criminal justice and tickets are inherently unfair.

This is a dry salsa that’s decent on tortilla chips or other mexican food, but works best as a hot dog or hamburger topping.

1 part finely diced onion

1 part finely diced green pepper

1 part finely chopped cilantro

finely diced jalapeno to taste

Chop everything up and store in the refrigerator for a couple hours–preferably 24 hours–before serving to allow flavors to blend. It’s important to note that an even part of cilantro is a TON of cilantro. The last time I did this I used one onion, one green pepper and almost an entire bundle of cilantro, though you want to remove most of the stems. Exact measurements are certainly not required.

Add a tiny squirt of ketchup and mustard and just a little cream-cheese and pile on this topping and you’ve turned those nasty hot dogs into something decent.

But every time I drank a bottle, it became more and more disgusting. I read somewhere that Robitussin, mushrooms and acid are all self-limiting, as in they are the opposite of addictive. The more you take them, the less you desire to do them again. I’m not sure about others, but that was certainly the case with me. Now I haven’t gotten a Robitussin high in almost ten years, and the same is true for acid. I still do mushrooms every couple years, but I have to talk myself into it every time, even though I almost always have a good trip and usually feel re-invigorated and motivated for days after.

I should give a disclaimer, however. I’m not trying to imply that Robitussin and other highs are all fun and games. I’ve seen people projectile vomit from Robitussin, temporarily lose their ability to communicate, and one friend who even convinced himself he was dead. It definately hinders your ability to operate machinery. If you do Robitussin to get high, be sure to do your research first. There are websites where people describe their trips and the dangers. Like most drugs, don’t go to the mall. Get out into nature instead, though be certain you are safe. No rock climbing for example  Make sure you have a non-buzz-kill sober guy for your first time and remember to listen to him. Also heed the warnings about mixing with maoi inhibitors, don’t buy the cough-medicine that has ingredients other than dextromethorphan-hydrobromide (dxm) and never forget that you’re high and not thinking clearly.

Now, for your viewing enjoyment, some random people tripping on Robo… ah this brings back happy memories.

Robitussin Road trip.

Me during a Robitussin high

These images are of me and another buddy, over ten years ago, chugging our 4 oz bottles of Robitussin to get high during a long road trip. Don’t worry; the driver is totally sober. I posted this on my old website and blurred out my friend’s face because I figured he wouldn’t want it on the internet, and he got kind of mad at me for thinking he would be ashamed of it.






“If you don’t believe drugs have done good things for us, do me a favor. Go home tonight; take all your albums, all your tapes and all your CDs and burn ‘em. Cuz you know what? The musicians who made all that great music that’s enhanced your lives throughout the years: Real fucking high on drugs.” – Bill Hicks

A true story about Robo Tripping by Kalin Ringkvist

Robitussin High - my blog post about this story

Sometime in 1998 I drank a four ounce bottle of Robitussin Maximum Strength and smoked a bunch of weed. This combination gives a person a high that is as powerful as mushrooms, acid or ecstasy, but with its own unique psychoactive flavor.

About an hour into my trip, my roommate, who had not joined me in my drug use this night, asked me if I wanted to go see Scream 2 with a few other friends. I jumped on the idea, as I wanted to get out of the apartment.

However, Scream was not the kind of movie I would normally see, and the idea that I would be seeing it tonight had never crossed my mind, so my thoughts had no frame of reference to hold on to.

My Robo-mind didn’t feel like seeing a horror movie. I wanted to see a romance. To my forward reasoning, it wasn’t that I didn’t want to see a horror movie, it was that I didn’t realize that horror movies even existed. The idea was absurd. Why would anyone enjoy watching people get killed? So even though I could remember enjoying horror movies when I was a kid, the idea was foreign and I went to the theater having no idea what to expect.

When the movie got moving I immediately latched on to the sub-plot of the reporter woman played by Courtney Cox and the deputy played by David Arquette who have a budding romance. There was actually only a little time devoted to this plot, but I decided that this was the center of the movie, and was what the director had intended everyone to focus on.

There was all this killing going on in the background, and people who were scared, and all worried and distracted by the killing. If I had been on mushrooms or acid I probably would have been disgusted and horrified and had to walk out, but Robo is a little different and for me isn’t as likely to accentuate negative emotions.

All the killing didn’t affect me one way or the other. I found it boring more than anything else, and just wanted to get back to the dialogue between Dewey and the reporter lady. However, I understood the importance of the killing as background. It was painting a picture of a society of murder. I didn’t realize the characters weren’t used to this kind of thing. I thought Wes Cravin was portraying a whole society gone horribly wrong where everyone’s killing each other.

So at the core of Scream 2, as I saw it, was the story of this new love, trying to grow in the midst of all this horror, and even though they have their lives and their friend’s lives to worry about, they still stop and risk death so they can steal a kiss and take time for what’s really important. The whole point was to show the power of love and that no matter how torn apart and psychotic our society becomes, love will always find a way to survive. I had to shake my head at the genius of it and at the end of the movie, I couldn’t understand why people weren’t standing and cheering.

After I sobered up I laughed and reminded myself that it was a horror movie, not a romance.

Over a decade later (September 20^th, 2009 to be exact) I saw Courtney Cox on Late Night with Conan O’brian, and she mentioned that she had played the reporter on Scream and that she had married someone from that movie. I had never known nor cared who had played those roles until that night, so I got on the internet and discovered that the reporter and the sheriff from my romance delusion had been married ever since they did Scream 2.

“Less than 8% of people who were interviewed today knew what a browser was.” This is in Times Square, and most of the people in the video seemed to be internet users.

This is equivalent to 92% of the people driving down the freeway not knowing what a car is.

Many of these people have kids on the internet, or are banking on the internet or are voting on technology related issues. Our computer systems are being designed around the 92% of the population who are wandering blindly. Imagine how efficiently things could run if users were expected to have the same basic education we expect from automobile drivers.

Imagine being a 16 year old going on your first drive with your dad and he sits down in the passenger seat and says “Okay, now put your windshield wiper in the gas tank and your foot on the motor oil,” and have him expect you to understand what he means.

If you know the difference between a web browser and search engine and the difference between a CPU, a hard drive and a computer, do me a favor. Next time someone asks you what kind of car you drive, tell them AM/PM or Chevron and make them explain the difference between a gas station and a car. Maybe then they will understand our pain.

For those who have no idea what I’m talking about here’s a basic explanation of the difference between a search engine and web browser.

I also get to do something I love, which is sitting in front of a computer coding fancy little user interfaces and dynamic animations for websites and banner ads.

I used to tell myself that I would never work for a major corporation, and it might seem odd that a devoted anarchist would have his own phone extension and company business card. As much as I complain about how society works I’ve found that making the best of it can build a pretty comfortable life.

I’ve realized in the last half-decade that anarchism isn’t about fighting back against the way the world works. Sometimes you need to deal with it and make the best of it. I don’t believe I’m going to change anyone’s minds by working in a kitchen the rest of my life or make any notable difference by going off the grid though I used to believe that I could.

The more corporate I become and the farther I climb up through the middle-class, the more confident I become that the whole system is skewed and unfair. I see people in the drive-through’s, working twice as hard as I do for a fraction of the pay, doing something that isn’t nearly as fun. I feel bad about that sometimes, like I’m just exploiting society and giving less back than someone who washes dishes… though I suppose you could argue that I am building things that people use and in my own tiny way, I’m pushing the bounds and expectations of technology, but the people making the Wordpress plugins that do so much for this site are doing the same thing to a greater degree, and they’re not paid anything.

Most people in the corporate world are not programmers who actually build something. Instead, their jobs involve pushing money around in one form or another. In an anarchist society, all that time and energy would either be going toward making the world a better place, or toward leisure activities like spending time with family.

I still love the corporate world for my own selfish reasons. Without it I wouldn’t be able to order sushi or fancy espresso whenever I wanted. I suppose that as an anarchist that does make me a hypocrite, but I’ve decided that it’s better to be a hypocrite than to not care. As an anarchist, I would like to see a world where everyone on the planet could order sushi and fancy espresso whenever they want.

This frightened me because everyone else seemed to nod as though they know the situation… but I’m wondering how is that even possible? If you don’t have evidence, isn’t that just a modern witch hunt? During the real witch hunts, the persecutors felt every bit as strongly that they were right.

Do people just look at someone and see their cold-hearted expression and simply decide that they’re guilty?

I can think of a lot of situations growing up where a teacher or babysitter would think I did something and decide I was guilty based on my facial expressions or inability to defend myself verbally; and they were wrong every time.

The problem is that there are certain people that just look guilty, who have that guilty persona about them… quite frequently they are guilty of something, but not of what you think they are. I think I may have been one of those people growing up. I always felt as though I was doing something wrong, but I didn’t know what. I wanted to be a good person; I wanted to follow the rules, but every once in a while I would get in trouble for something I didn’t understand, or something I flat out didn’t do, and it made me bitter, angry and scared, which showed up in my face and body language, confirming for everyone that I was guilty.