Post by Editor in Chief on Jul 14, 2011 12:29:02 GMT
Intermediate Utopian Chemistry: Or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Hashish
-Sepulchrave
Distinguished Comrades of the Djelian Institute of the Arts, I am delighted to contribute a short address to the programme of your 120,000th bi-annual meeting. Many of the preceding lectures impressed me greatly, and I doubt that I can attune my voice (which is naturally deep) to their high pitch of eloquence. I particularly enjoyed Robgea's "A Comprehensive Poetics of Suicide Bombers' Death-Cries". Never again will we be content with the stereotyped last words of, "Death to the capitalist and suicide-bang for bathos!" Also innovative was Sultan Fewms' "Notes Towards an Odourless Sulphur-Based Bomb".
This last term has been a fine one for Djelo-Marxism. We have liberated many from oppressive capitalist hegemony by the proven method of blowing it up with incendiary bombs. The southern part of Ankh-Morpork lies in smouldering ruins, Genua has been gutted, and Sto Lat burns with the terrible fire of several gigalitres of napalm - but I can assure you all that this has not affected our friendly diplomatic relations with them in the slightest. One endures a lot from one's allies before criticising them.
My question for the Academy is this: If in Djelibeybi 'Art' is defined as "the use and manufacture of incendiary bombs," then what is Djelian Science? I think the answer obvious. Art is science plus the delight thereof. Science, on the other hand, is Art minus Art's thrill. This is surely what the poet Ptoe referred to when he called Science a "Vulture, whose wings are dull realities."
Yet we injure science by confining it to the dusty attic of bloodless abstraction, for there is at least one area in which it infallibly inspires the exalted poetic sensibility we otherwise attribute only to the artist. I refer to marxopsychopharmaceuticals, or 'drugs that affect the Marxist brain.' With your induulgence, I will devote the remainder of this address to an exposition of the mind-altering drugs sustaining our utopia.
Any survey of marxopsychopharamaceuticals must begin with hashish. Though generally believed to be of ancient origin, it was actually invented only slightly after the Revolution. When a group of citizens volunteered to be its guinea-pigs, the Hashishim were born. Until recently, they only imagined themselves to be a guild. Lost in chemical dream, they fantasised that they occupied extensive caverns and were part of an international fraternity of assassins. Really they only occupied the hashish-den of a modest-sized tent. When the indelible psychosis wrought by prolonged use of hashish became clear, Djelibeybi Council felt obliged to step in. Now the Hashishim now occupy a real warren of caves hollowed out of some cliffs beside Djelibeybi at tax-payers expense. It was judged cheaper than building a psychiatric asylum, what with the cost of electric-imp therapy.
The psychological effects of hashish vary more than is generally supposed. Paranoia, fickleness, vague philosophising, aggression, camaraderie, clumsy attempts at subtlety - the hashish-addict can rapidly shift between these states, having the net effect of making them so quixotic as to be difficult to read. A fair metaphor might be the difficulty of making out the features of someone in a smoky room. One might have thought a consistent side-effect to be lack of motivation, and this is generally true, but sufficient incentive - in the form of thousands of tooni - have on two occasions almost caused an Hashishim to cross the street in order to close a contract. They did not end up doing so on either occasion, but their temptation was sufficient to demonstrate the principle.
Hashish has been called a gateway drug because of Hashishim's habit of taking it whilst slumped in doorways. Which is not to say that Djelian hashish-addicts do not also use other substances in doorway; our doorways are so sturdily made that they can be used for a variety of purposes. In any case, it is remarkable how often our hashish-addicts blend their drugs (whether in doorways or not) with the claims of experimental science. Often they know the names of a great many compounds of utopian chemistry, and delight in slicing them, as though truffles, over a bowl of word-salad. "Comrade," they might say, "yesterday I wished to slightly modify the sensitivity of the cannabinoid receptors in my left eyeball, so I took .00456 milligrams of theta-enablers in aerosol form." One stares, uncomprehending, until they add something like, "Ha! Ha! Ha! Just kidding, comrade. One cannot purchase theta-enablers in aerosol form!" Such is hashish-humour in Djelibeybi.
The Hashishim possess laboratories in which they prepare their drug in various forms. Chocolate is the most interesting, but it is rarely seen in that shape by non-Hashishim. A former ambassador to AM once showed me a box of hashish-filled chocolates he had acquired in the hopes of getting the AM magistrates stoned out of their brains and thus more careless in negotiation. He complained to me that his 'source' had given him a whole sack of hashish, but that when he took it out to look at it in Sto Lat, a small dog snatched and ate it. Small Sto Lattean dogs, more than the law, seem to be the hashish-eaters' most diabolical adversary.
As marxopsychopharmaceuticals go, unadulterated hashish is something of a failure. Although adding it to the water of anarchists and counter-revolutionaries has been judged an expedient measure of utopian mind-alteration, it seems best to blend it with complementary substances. With coffee, for example, which is a quintessentially Djelian drug. Hashish makes one's of reality nebulous. Coffee unbearably sharpens it. Hashish removes the wish to do anything. Coffee so agitates that one forgets how to use magic and rituals. Marxist chemistry predicts that the two can be harmoniously blended: ideally, at the same time that coffee allows the ingester to see reality keenly enough to become a fervent Marxist, hashish so soothes him that he becomes able to light, with steady hands, the fuse of explosives tied to capitalist buildings.
Coffee is probably also responsible for most of our nation's anarchists. Such is a hazard of overindulgence. However, skill in preparing coffee also seems a remarkably accurate barometer of the likelihood of someone developing anarchistic tendencies. This puts us in something of a bind: on the one hand, such people should really be pre-emptively purged or converted into living bombs (see my previous article, 'Bomb-Making for Fun and the Destruction of Those Who Would Profit'), but, on the other hand, they really do make excellent coffee.
Alcohol has little purpose in utopian chemistry. Those who attempt Revolutionary exploits under its effects only drag us backward into defeat. A caveat is that it may usefully be served to condemned criminals; it saves us the cost of ammunition, and wear on the wall before which they would traditionally stand. The 'Grand Finale' is a case in point. This nefarious concoction is available in the Rising Sun Inn on the southern part of the Road of the Sun. A mere taste will knock one out for hours, suggesting its utility in abducting foreign politicians. Could it only be smeared on weapons, it would be more efficacious than almost any poisons. If one drinks it in Djelibeybi, one's staggering seems coded to drag one into the Library of the Illusionary Institute of the Arts, or to cause one to plunge into the river a little to the north of the city. Naturally, one immediately falls unconscious at the bottom thereof. I lost two group-mates that way, when we foolishly decided to toast one other with the stuff.
What's that? We must break for lunch? But I have only begun to plumb the depths of Djelian utopian chemistry! I have not gotten to... Oh, halveh for desert, you say? A Klatchian wizard's weakness. Okay, I will be back afterward with 'Intermediate Utopian Chemistry II'.
-Sepulchrave
Distinguished Comrades of the Djelian Institute of the Arts, I am delighted to contribute a short address to the programme of your 120,000th bi-annual meeting. Many of the preceding lectures impressed me greatly, and I doubt that I can attune my voice (which is naturally deep) to their high pitch of eloquence. I particularly enjoyed Robgea's "A Comprehensive Poetics of Suicide Bombers' Death-Cries". Never again will we be content with the stereotyped last words of, "Death to the capitalist and suicide-bang for bathos!" Also innovative was Sultan Fewms' "Notes Towards an Odourless Sulphur-Based Bomb".
This last term has been a fine one for Djelo-Marxism. We have liberated many from oppressive capitalist hegemony by the proven method of blowing it up with incendiary bombs. The southern part of Ankh-Morpork lies in smouldering ruins, Genua has been gutted, and Sto Lat burns with the terrible fire of several gigalitres of napalm - but I can assure you all that this has not affected our friendly diplomatic relations with them in the slightest. One endures a lot from one's allies before criticising them.
My question for the Academy is this: If in Djelibeybi 'Art' is defined as "the use and manufacture of incendiary bombs," then what is Djelian Science? I think the answer obvious. Art is science plus the delight thereof. Science, on the other hand, is Art minus Art's thrill. This is surely what the poet Ptoe referred to when he called Science a "Vulture, whose wings are dull realities."
Yet we injure science by confining it to the dusty attic of bloodless abstraction, for there is at least one area in which it infallibly inspires the exalted poetic sensibility we otherwise attribute only to the artist. I refer to marxopsychopharmaceuticals, or 'drugs that affect the Marxist brain.' With your induulgence, I will devote the remainder of this address to an exposition of the mind-altering drugs sustaining our utopia.
Any survey of marxopsychopharamaceuticals must begin with hashish. Though generally believed to be of ancient origin, it was actually invented only slightly after the Revolution. When a group of citizens volunteered to be its guinea-pigs, the Hashishim were born. Until recently, they only imagined themselves to be a guild. Lost in chemical dream, they fantasised that they occupied extensive caverns and were part of an international fraternity of assassins. Really they only occupied the hashish-den of a modest-sized tent. When the indelible psychosis wrought by prolonged use of hashish became clear, Djelibeybi Council felt obliged to step in. Now the Hashishim now occupy a real warren of caves hollowed out of some cliffs beside Djelibeybi at tax-payers expense. It was judged cheaper than building a psychiatric asylum, what with the cost of electric-imp therapy.
The psychological effects of hashish vary more than is generally supposed. Paranoia, fickleness, vague philosophising, aggression, camaraderie, clumsy attempts at subtlety - the hashish-addict can rapidly shift between these states, having the net effect of making them so quixotic as to be difficult to read. A fair metaphor might be the difficulty of making out the features of someone in a smoky room. One might have thought a consistent side-effect to be lack of motivation, and this is generally true, but sufficient incentive - in the form of thousands of tooni - have on two occasions almost caused an Hashishim to cross the street in order to close a contract. They did not end up doing so on either occasion, but their temptation was sufficient to demonstrate the principle.
Hashish has been called a gateway drug because of Hashishim's habit of taking it whilst slumped in doorways. Which is not to say that Djelian hashish-addicts do not also use other substances in doorway; our doorways are so sturdily made that they can be used for a variety of purposes. In any case, it is remarkable how often our hashish-addicts blend their drugs (whether in doorways or not) with the claims of experimental science. Often they know the names of a great many compounds of utopian chemistry, and delight in slicing them, as though truffles, over a bowl of word-salad. "Comrade," they might say, "yesterday I wished to slightly modify the sensitivity of the cannabinoid receptors in my left eyeball, so I took .00456 milligrams of theta-enablers in aerosol form." One stares, uncomprehending, until they add something like, "Ha! Ha! Ha! Just kidding, comrade. One cannot purchase theta-enablers in aerosol form!" Such is hashish-humour in Djelibeybi.
The Hashishim possess laboratories in which they prepare their drug in various forms. Chocolate is the most interesting, but it is rarely seen in that shape by non-Hashishim. A former ambassador to AM once showed me a box of hashish-filled chocolates he had acquired in the hopes of getting the AM magistrates stoned out of their brains and thus more careless in negotiation. He complained to me that his 'source' had given him a whole sack of hashish, but that when he took it out to look at it in Sto Lat, a small dog snatched and ate it. Small Sto Lattean dogs, more than the law, seem to be the hashish-eaters' most diabolical adversary.
As marxopsychopharmaceuticals go, unadulterated hashish is something of a failure. Although adding it to the water of anarchists and counter-revolutionaries has been judged an expedient measure of utopian mind-alteration, it seems best to blend it with complementary substances. With coffee, for example, which is a quintessentially Djelian drug. Hashish makes one's of reality nebulous. Coffee unbearably sharpens it. Hashish removes the wish to do anything. Coffee so agitates that one forgets how to use magic and rituals. Marxist chemistry predicts that the two can be harmoniously blended: ideally, at the same time that coffee allows the ingester to see reality keenly enough to become a fervent Marxist, hashish so soothes him that he becomes able to light, with steady hands, the fuse of explosives tied to capitalist buildings.
Coffee is probably also responsible for most of our nation's anarchists. Such is a hazard of overindulgence. However, skill in preparing coffee also seems a remarkably accurate barometer of the likelihood of someone developing anarchistic tendencies. This puts us in something of a bind: on the one hand, such people should really be pre-emptively purged or converted into living bombs (see my previous article, 'Bomb-Making for Fun and the Destruction of Those Who Would Profit'), but, on the other hand, they really do make excellent coffee.
Alcohol has little purpose in utopian chemistry. Those who attempt Revolutionary exploits under its effects only drag us backward into defeat. A caveat is that it may usefully be served to condemned criminals; it saves us the cost of ammunition, and wear on the wall before which they would traditionally stand. The 'Grand Finale' is a case in point. This nefarious concoction is available in the Rising Sun Inn on the southern part of the Road of the Sun. A mere taste will knock one out for hours, suggesting its utility in abducting foreign politicians. Could it only be smeared on weapons, it would be more efficacious than almost any poisons. If one drinks it in Djelibeybi, one's staggering seems coded to drag one into the Library of the Illusionary Institute of the Arts, or to cause one to plunge into the river a little to the north of the city. Naturally, one immediately falls unconscious at the bottom thereof. I lost two group-mates that way, when we foolishly decided to toast one other with the stuff.
What's that? We must break for lunch? But I have only begun to plumb the depths of Djelian utopian chemistry! I have not gotten to... Oh, halveh for desert, you say? A Klatchian wizard's weakness. Okay, I will be back afterward with 'Intermediate Utopian Chemistry II'.