Saturday, August 24, 2013

Like IT...like it...LIKE it

https://www.facebook.com/pages/Portlands-Cap-N-Stem-Co/618891548144511

Wednesday, July 24, 2013

Berger should read this...

...but never-mind his other posts they will make you sad!

http://thuleanperspective.com/2013/07/24/about-christianity/

Monday, July 22, 2013

Saturday, June 29, 2013

Sunday, June 16, 2013

Saturday, June 15, 2013

Sunday, June 9, 2013

Saturday, April 27, 2013

Wednesday, April 24, 2013

 Magic mushrooms' psychedelic ingredient could help treat people with severe depression

Trials of psilocybin blocked by drugs law red tape, says Professor David Nutt of Imperial College London
Prof David Nutt says that because magic mushrooms are rated as a class-A drug, their active chemical ingredient cannot be manufactured unless a special licence is granted. Photograph: Christian Sinibaldi for the Guardian
Drugs derived from magic mushrooms could help treat people with severe depression. Scientists believe the chemical psilocybin, the psychedelic ingredient in magic mushrooms, can turn down parts of the brain that are overactive in severely depressive patients. The drug appears to stop patients dwelling on themselves and their own perceived inadequacies.
However, a bid by British scientists to carry out trials of psilocybin on patients in order to assess its full medical potential has been blocked by red tape relating to Britain's strict drugs laws. Professor David Nutt, professor of neuropsychopharmacology at Imperial College London, will tell a conference today that because magic mushrooms are rated as a class-A drug, their active chemical ingredient cannot be manufactured unless a special licence is granted.
"We haven't started the study because finding companies that could manufacture the drug and who are prepared to go through the regulatory hoops to get the licence is proving very difficult," said Nutt. "The whole field is so bedevilled by primitive old-fashioned attitudes. Even if you have a good idea, you may never get it into the clinic, it seems."
Research by Nutt has found that psilocybin switches off part of the brain called the anterior cingulate cortex. It was known that this area is overactive in individuals suffering from depression. In his tests on healthy individuals, it was found that psilocybin had a profound effect on making these volunteers feel happier weeks after they had taken the drug, said Nutt – who was sacked as the chairman of the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs in 2009 after repeatedly clashing with government ministers about the dangers and classification of illicit drugs.
Nutt's team also discovered that another section of the brain known as the default mode network was also influenced by psilocybin. "People with depression have overactive default mode networks and so ruminate on themselves, on their inadequacies, on their badness, that they are worthless, that they have failed – to an extent that is sometimes delusional. Again psilo-cybin appears to block that activity and stops this obsessive rumination."
To determine if psilocybin could be used as a treatment to help patients, Nutt and his team were given £550,000 by the Medical Research Council to begin a three-year project to test the drug on people with depression. Patients who had failed to respond to two previous treatments would be selected. The aim was to test 30 with the drug and 30 with a placebo.
However, the group has found its path blocked by bureaucracy. So difficult has the government and the EU made it for companies to manufacture the active ingredients of Class A drugs that price tags of around £100,000 were given by chemical companies.
"We only need a relatively small amount of the drug, an order worth only a few hundred pounds," said Nutt, who is set to describe his work with psilocybin at the UK Festival of Neuroscience conference in London today. "If we have to pay £100,000 we simply cannot afford to carry out the rest of the study. We have not given up but it is proving very difficult," he said.
"Depression is now the largest cause of disability in Europe. There are many effective treatments but only about a third of individuals respond fully. At least 10% fail to respond to three different treatments. We badly need more types of treatment but we cannot pursue these because the government is denying scientists access to powerful tools that could help people in need. The regulations that govern researchers access to Class A drugs are totally inappropriate and harmful."

Sunday, April 14, 2013

Chaga


Finally some Maine Chaga!  Winter walks in up here in the northern lands are the best time to look for Chaga, no cluttering foliage, just exposed trees trunks shooting towards the sky...so after a winter of finding only bare remnants of already harvested Chaga, today was the day we struck mycelia-gold...It took getting Kathleen to stand on my shoulders to reach this gnarly growth deep in a nature preserve,but non the less we harvested responsibly, careful not to tear at the tree...time for Chaga tea!!!!

Tuesday, March 26, 2013

Oldies but Coolies




Good Ol' Massachusetts walks with my lady

Wednesday, March 20, 2013

Conscious Dickheads

I've stayed out of political commentary for sometime now but as i continue to envelope myself in a world of food, from production to distribution i am ready to state my anarchical feelings towards the ideal soccer-mom's-hot-spot-to-find-a-hockey-dad-to-fuck-in-the-juice-bar of the 'supposed' responsible consumer superstore of Whole Foods.  I took this image above from Derek Fenner's tumbler after seeing his post of it and also seeing this book in isle 'Organic' yesterday.  Let me first begin by redefining or un-defining the words: 'Organic' or 'All Natural'...

...All too often do we see these words plastered all over the boxed products that we fiend for like they are the only real GMO-free or Chemical-free or Synthetic Fertilizer-free foods out there, but let me tell you sudo-hippie-moms of the USA, your way fucking off mark...Working on farms across North America, i have come to know as fact that when a farm becomes 'Certified USDA Organic' They are actually lowering their standards to the government's standards that do NOT promote putting 'saved' seeds in healthy happy soil and letting the glory of thunder claps and rain storms humble the dumb farmer as their seeds sow and grow...In fact the US governments standards for 'Organic' is a game of percentages...So 'Organic' by whole-foodies package-stocked-shelved-scripture of a definition is simply when a farmer, usually a 'monocrapper' is allowed by the Government to either use 100%, 95% or as low as 70% Organic ingredients in their products.

Let's put it in perspective for you urban food heathens out there...say a farm wants to be able to sticker their product as 'Organic'...say they mono crop Tomatoes and lets say they produce a tomato product...hmmmm...soup sounds good...okay so now the government is not looking at their product as much as their produce production.  The farm gathers at cost prices all their other ingredients for their soup from other 'organic' farmers, that mind you only need to be 70% organic.  So since those other 30% UNorganic ingredients are UNaccounted for and only the tomato soup product producers are held accountable for 'their' 70% organic tomatoes, they can soak 30% of their crop with whatever fucked up Monsanto chemical they want to meat up those beefsteaks with and then mix em up with their 70% 'organic' tomatoes.  So now after all is said and done and you take a 70/30% blend from this farm and 70/30% blend from that farm and so on and so forth you now have a Certified USDA Organic Product with most likely less than 10% Organic produce in it...probably even less seeing that Certified farms can mix their organic and non-organic produce giving cross-contamination a whole new meaning! So in conclusion, the definition of Organic, your Whole Foods organic products are probably not even a single % Organic when you break it all down.

Okay take a deep breath and crack that stiffening neck...exhale and realize some companies do actually produce 100% organic product...mostly these companies grow all of their ingredients and stick to a strict code of ethics that allows the consumer if properly educated on the company in question to rest assured that their Veggie Soup is actually Organic, real organic, before the fuck-faces of Monsanto were born between shit and piss Organic!

Organic is now a brand, as is Levi or Whole Foods own 365 brand and you know how much angsty anarchists like me hate fucking brands!  So lets bring this rant back to the book that should make people realize what Whole Foods is all about if they looked above the text and the praise blurbs on the back cover...In my opinion this book is almost exactly what Konny 2012 attempted to do...grab an already faithful group of seemingly young and 'conscious' consumers and attempt to snatch the last of their free thought and channel it into the broken and hazardous system of Capitalism.

If you've gotten this far I'm probably preaching to the choir but to those who are still shaky on my opinions here i ask you to take this simple challenge.  Go into Hanniford, Market Basket or any other regular grocery store downtown and casually walk into their back stock rooms and walk in fridges, I assure you as a produce delivery person they wont say anything to you...take a look at all of the boxes and bags and logo's on all the produce and products...now go into a Whole Foods and take a look in their back room.  You might be pissed that you are buying the same onions and bananas and cukes and much much more for almost double the price...now is that conscious capitalism or just plain fucking theft...thank you Whole Paychecks, I'm mean Whole Foods, thank you.     

The truly all natural organic farmers out their that remain uncertified by the USDA are the actual organic farmers.  So go to a farmers market, talk to a farmer and buy some good wholesome and all natural foods to support your healthy mind for all the anarchism articles you can find! : )

Monday, March 4, 2013

Thursday, February 28, 2013

Wednesday, February 20, 2013

Road poems (variations)

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1.

I'm left falling asleep with tear beads
dropping from eyelash to cheek
creating mini rivers down my beard
This anarchist break from Maine
all too sad and silly some days
playing gin-rummy on stoops across this country
for money is a fair bet
of weather or not we will make it
chance in the deck not the dealer
or the holder.
I find myself humming the time away
between the silences we share are laughs
giggles and glints of dust in the setting sun
dancing around our faces
all too sweaty and dirty and darkening with the days
as they pass we loose track of the months
unfolding before us
lost souls stirring in this complex world
we are running like children playing
cops and robbers
in the meridian of blood
are we thieves in the night?
as we live off of dumpster dives for bread
and tea from strangers?
the more rusted and earthen we look
the more people smile and hand us change

sooo, so strange

I don't remember his name but his face
is as clear as a kodachrome dream
weathered short brown mop atop a face
mid fifties and graying
I'm guessing his sanity was about the same as ours
he giggled endlessly behind us on a bus through Texas
kept asking each time we stopped for a smoke break
“is this LA”?
Nope I say
I woke up to see him standing and staring all too alone
holding his broken Camel butt between his lips
lost
scooped up in his tan insulated Carhart bibs
he is a dust bowl era man
far from home
I don't recall when he failed to get back on the bus
but I remembered his haunted lost look
when he wasn't there anymore

The people you observe on the road
are skin sacks crammed full of life
bitter and broken in a sea of memories
none specific, they all seem to be improvising
and living in lies to hide along the road
foreign air acts like a holistic medicine
to cover up the cracks and the caverns
of beatings and breaks underneath their existence

Waking up in a town north of the Mexican border
a line of officers shined us with flash lights
in the early morning frost
asking if each passenger was an American citizen
this westward caravan's like a dream
of pearl gun grips, rattle snakes, ghost towns
and land that seems to unravel forever
across the scape of cactus and sand, oil rigs
drinkers in dusters, bars blinking dim lit and
seemingly deserted
this country is smaller and bigger at the same time
for two mid twenties children
running with the bandits
in the last pale light of the west

Wherever we are going
I don't know
each time we drift to sleep we end up
away
running with the wild horses you see
all throughout the west

2.
Louisiana boasted black and white men
alike, mainly maintaining that Jesus
brought them from the prisons
to the palace.
by night and day
stranger's getting stranger.

Our tan Carhart bib overalled friend,
kept asking if we were in Huston yet?
giggling to himself as we approached
major cities along the way.
I cried when I noticed the lonely
in his blank stare
late in the dead city deep south,
waiting for another caravan to pack up.

My pitch forked figure
with crusted eyes
sleeps only by day
a half hour or so at a time
weary of pickpockets and
thieves along the highway drone

Mile upon mile
crows casting glass
along a Nevada pit stop where
a mess of a mother,
ghetto and greasy
gave blow jobs out in a
McDonald's bathroom
for a Happy Meal.
Food for her
young daughter.
The night before, claiming assault
to a man sound asleep, so she
could swing a set of seats
to watch over her kin

Jason Asselin's twin lost his lady
and baby and headed back to the bay
homeless once again,
rambling in a southern drawl,
that lit up the dark early morning sky
his stale breath of smoke
outside the station of, god knows where.
Greyhounds bring all the likes
gang members, homeless, crazies, babies,
families from Tulsa, Heroin addicted,
strung out sad eyes, liver-lost grease Goth's
and a slue of everything else
saddle stitched for the road
dead set on chasing the sun.

There is a freedom in the lack of things we own
we traveled roadside and ditch, pitching tents
forever hitching west, penniless...a choice we chose,
but many along side us, road on, choice-less

we shared the little we had,
apples and Nutella
and enjoyed grumbling bellies
making it all the better to be dreaming
of sewing seeds
sleeping on a beach in Santa Cruz,
with all the merry bums
and druggies

The last light in the west over Monterey bay
gave us breath, remembering the
cold days back east, where for months
the sun is so far lost
behind clouds and fog, that we forget
the warmth and the rain, awaiting us
only a few fortnights away.

The felons and freaks, train hoppers and oil men,
immigrant families, arrested mid day
ripped from a bus, busted for transporting
Illegal's and drugs.  The deserts of the West
don't give much. Life doesn't hide
in the hills of West Texas, home to a hell
without a skyline or border.

Chasing these strips of tar trapping our map
routing us like a black widowed
mycelium, running in a spiral, outward
wishing a direction or place would
call itself home for us
in search of a beacon to begin anew
and forget the broken past, that promised
only more heartache.

We are still young runaways from anywhere
out-here, hiding in the movement that keeps us
still, chancing the weight on our hearts with the lack
of such burdens on our backs, a breath past death
and a reason to find out,
what lies in truth
may only be found
where no one can find you.

Monday, February 18, 2013

Kerouac, are you with me?
Kerouac, are you watching over us?
Kerouac, hope to meet you
You and Woody...but for now
here is my penny-tribute
to you two hopping freights
in the big train of the southern skies tonight
shooting pacific bound
in a fashion kin to you
all rat trash canned beans bearing
sacks, an old guitar and banjo
Just you, me in search of west ocean blue

Tuesday, February 12, 2013

To Kathleen

Know we both write
with sentences that stretch out over the sea
like jetties and docks that make a city a port
a scape of jagged rib bones collapsing into the wash
building upon incomplete thoughts
like a school teachers nightmare
until magnetic fragments connect
and create a poem in motion
like a subtle body beat or the break
of a tsunami spill

Taking a homemade blade
to the paper birch bark
encasing the built up heart of what drives words
like a dirty earth dream
sewn with mycelial stitches
that restore and give sight
to raw ridden scars

and
even now as the rush blows past
and the tides washed out
the pulse behind my eyes beats red
drumming ahead of my body
my soul charges forward and leaves
my rot iron gut unstable
useless and trying for a life
that never had me in mind
after art escapes the body
you feel instincts are nonexistent
and lefts often confused with whats right
right under the raw hide
drizzled with gospel sung sins
sewing past into patches
and ripping filtered tips off fingers
like invisible Chinese finger traps

change
is not a natural curve
not a burden unheard of
but not know until its felt
when will time break fever
when will life break cold

state lines forever
my body hums like a trains
coal shuffle
it's been two days since a drink of water
been too long since food was enjoying
been far from a time we realized
we were home

so
when I try
and describe the weight
that is lifted off the mind body and stir of the soul
is when I know
you feel the same
feel the relief
like a orgasm thats release
lasts longer than the
words took to write down
but will never know the pent up
port city grasp that was chased down
night after day
light into abyss
until they flow
these words know
that time
that time
is everything
and all the misery that
accompanies it
the building up of poems in our minds
the feeling you get when it's out
thank goodness
thank goodness

Tuesday, January 29, 2013

Friday, January 18, 2013

Jack McCarthy 1939-2013

 I received word yesterday from Jim Dunn of Jack McCarthy's passing and i was extremely sad to hear that he was gone.  But gone to a better place indeed.  I met Jack in 2009 after a conversation with Bernard Dolan of Strange Famous Records...he remarked upon how much love and respect he had for Jack and I soon after discovered so many people i knew had a deep friendship with him.  Jack to me was Vincent Price in person...it was as if i was meeting the man who created Edward Scissorhand's.  I met him at the Umbrella in Concord at an almost speakeasy reading attended by only the closets of friends and was extremely moved by how he pulled everyone one under his warm wings as he revealed poetic stories road tested and sublime in every way.  I still feel extremely fortunate to have met Jack and have shared great conversation before and after his set.  I locked my keys in my car on my way to meet Jack while stopping by my fathers wood shop to say a quick hello... unfortunately my father was not there so i waited for AAA and called to inform Jack i would be late, he said he would be sure to do his AAA poem for me. I felt lucky to have that poem dedicated to me at the reading.
The last time i stood in my fathers wood shop was that evening and it would have been the last time i saw him alive, if he was there, but unfortunately he passed only a week or so after that night.  In the first picture Jack and I were sitting at a Starbucks right around the corner from the Umbrella and as he figured out his set he began humming and drumming with his pen along to Ray Charles tunes...the blond girl to the right in the background keep looking at Jack in the most loving way, like I'm pretty sure i witnessed this girl fall in love with him as we talked about old blues tunes and poetry...it was a fantastic missed connection only i saw and Jack never realized.  A couple weeks after my dad's passing i stumbled across a mint copy of Ray Charles first LP off of Atlantic, one Jack had been searching for forever. I sent it to him and he was ecstatic and i was just happy to have made him happy.  I shared only a few emails with Jack after that and worked on several paintings of him that have yet to come to full fruition. One day i hope to finish them and one day maybe he will see them through the time continuum that is life and death.

Thursday, December 20, 2012

Best Craigslist Ad Ever!

Currently Hiring for all positions in a Post-Apocalyptic Clean Up / Scavenging crew.

Responsibilities include but are not limited to:

Crude Weapons Fabrication
Food & Resource Gathering
Scouting potential threats and hideouts
Barricade building
Shelter finding
Futile attempts at making radio contact
Recruiting other clean-up crew / survival members
Solving some government conspiracy that got us into this mess
Gossiping over a "promised land" that was unaffected by the apocalypse, and trying to find it

Qualifications:
10+ years experience preferred but not required (will train)
Bachelor's degree preferred (not that it means anything anymore)
All limbs and appendages still attached and functioning
Generally healthy and sane of mind
A desire for ADVENTURE

This is a great opportunity to go on living after we've all been seriously screwed, and a change to create a new world!
If this is a job you are interested in please respond with a Cover letter and your Resume. And we'll get back to ya!

  • Location: Portland / Everywhere
  • Compensation: Safety in Numbers
  • Principals only. Recruiters, please don't contact this job poster.
  • Please, no phone calls about this job!
  • Please do not contact job poster about other services, products or commercial interests.
PostingID:3492240065

Wednesday, November 21, 2012

Sign Makin'


Been working on some hand painted design, just using latex house paint on some nice handmade paper.  Diggin' graphic stuff right now.

Tuesday, October 16, 2012

Missing Lou


A happy arrangement: many people prefer cats to other people, and many cats prefer people to other cats. -Mason Cooley


Wednesday, October 10, 2012

The songs we used to sing


Days in the woods, waiting...


A ritual is an Elixer
its production
an act of consumption
a medicine show man
stuck on eutopian
a dream that is (PLACE)
or is it searching? simply
alchemical traces of mind
making promises in ritual
to stay
for now resisting
feelings to flea forever

there are mere moments
where a silence and still thought
takes over, starting at my fingers first freezing
and forming a clearing
instant-sense like first spark to Salvia Apiana

searching with the witching rod
the flow of this earth holds tight
for the rushes will inevitably flow

O is for Occultism
for Otto Edler
for Over-man
under which we
look left and right
when
my eyes search daily
for basidiomycota AHA's!
In the surrounding woods
my comfort
after 4
still covered in smears of house paint
smiling at the rain
and leaves showering down
tinging my cap
and readying dikarya
I start
growing the beard of Hericium Erinaceus
bearing the teeth of Hyndnum Repandum
and glow like Omphalotus Olearius
to blend in

never let the woods suspect your entry

I'm learning to love
the alone
a sense
forbidden by most
internally uncontrollable
absorbed by few
when surrounded by so many deaths
this comic nature turns
to a sense of organic urgency

meet me where the mushrooms grow
my fallen loves
and we shall feast
never under a god, but a totum
only representing you
my dearly departed

as above
so below

Sunday, October 7, 2012

I kiss the bottle, should've been kissing you

Now its all dirty brown and rust colored
creating a dust print, sweat-stained
and burn on my back, tattered overalls
and a train conductor hat,

Heathens are what we are tonight
we are only Heathens
here in the pale moon light

Monday, October 1, 2012

I called to my executioners to let me bite the ends of their guns, as I died. I called to all plagues to stifle me with sand and blood. Disaster was my god. I stretched out in mud. I dried myself in criminal air. I played clever tricks on insanity.
Spring brought to me an idiot’s terrifying laughter.

Arthur Rimbaud, A Season in Hell

Thursday, September 20, 2012

MA Myco-Mania

 Some sort of Boletus, not sure what!?
 My Ganoderma tree is fruiting like mad!
 (very small) Boletus edulis
Clavulina coralloides

Monday, September 17, 2012

Charley Shively

I wish i had a better camera, but this is just a documentation that i am actually painting again!  It's been almost an entire year now and after making a bunch of canvases last week and just nervously staring at them for days, i went out to skateboard, realized i was old and broken, came home limping but satisfied that a man with a hobo's beard can still kickflip a trashcan and then I began to paint...I came to realized over these 11 months of homeless traveling, farming, learning, ingoring, hiding, running, jumping, drinking and sleeping on the Westward beaches, mountains and deserts that most people never come back to art once it has been away from them for too long.  I staved off the urge to make art for a long time (like a strange instinct) to see if it was really in me to have to paint and draw and after countless nights song struck and whiskey soaked down to the bone, endlessly dusty in the desert skies, i was going insane without art.  So i came back to the eastern shores to start anew.  

This is a diptic ive been wanting to paint for over three years now, it's still in the beginning stages, but after straying off into Thorpe-ville USA for wwwaaayyy too long, i remembered art is about what you crave to create, so here it is, the first of many, the man, the legend, the gay anarchist, bible burning, creator of the gay liberation magazine: Fag Rag, friend to John Wieners, Jim Dunn and so many other great poets, such an original being indeed, never intended for mass production: Charley Shively

Thursday, September 13, 2012

Chaga? and the Secret Reishi Tree

(Tinder Conk)Fomes fomentarius (not CHAGA!)
New England is so amazing this time of year, over the course of only two days Ive found many of the mushrooms I've been obsessing over and reading extensively about in the desert!  Today i went to check up on my secret Reishi tree (Ganoderma Lucidum) and decided to drive to some other woods near by and didn't find much since it's been a few days since the last rain but towards the end of my walk i looked up at a woodpecker and saw a tree covered in Chaga (Inonotud Obliquus).  I was so excited i started back down the trail to drive home and find a big ladder and on the way down the path i found two more trees with what i thought was Chaga.  So i settled for this specimen in the photo, not actually Chaga, but Tinder Conk (Fomes fomentarius).  It was the only one my ladder would reach. Tinder conk unlike Chaga does not have nearly the same amount of health benefits, but it still has some.  Including anti-cancer properties and it also acts as a immunemodulator, bring a bodies immune system right to where it needs to be.  It can also be used to start fires and make Amadou (a cloth type fabric leathery and almost wool like.