Albert Hoffmann, RIP

Quick news item, with no particular connection to DC:

Swiss chemist Albert Hoffmann, who discovered and synthesized LSD in 1938, has died of a heart attack in his home in Basel. He was 102.

Hoffman famously injested the chemical by accident in mid April of 1943 (absorbed through his skin, if memory serves), and experienced distortions of perspective, as though the room were reflected in a circus mirror. The following Monday, he deliberately repeated the experiment to test his idea of what caused the hallucinations. Later that day, Hoffmann experienced what has become the most legendary bicycle ride in history, beholding "fantastic pictures, extraordinary shapes with intense, kaleidoscopic play of colours".

April 19th has been immortalized as "bicycle day" amongst The Faithful. At least the good doctor made it to this year's BD before departing...

His accomplishments also include the development of medicines to stabilize blood pressure and brain circulation, but his legacy will always be Lysergic Acid Diethylimyde-25.

He had referred to LSD as his "problem child" after seeing its popular use as a recreational chemical. He feared that Timothy Leary's propaganda had killed LSD's potential in academic research circles. Eventually, he came to embrace the scene somewhat. This year, Hoffmann was scheduled to speak at the World Psychedelic Forum in March, but his poor health prevented it.

Notably, Hoffmann was also credited for isolating psilocybin, the active compound in psychoactive mushrooms. And for THAT, he deserves a place in paradise along with the greatest human achievers...

G'nite, uncle Albert.

Day has turned to night.

No photo, just a brief item: Thanks to the blog at WFMU, I've just learned that Dave Day, legendary electric banjo superstar of The Monks, died last week (10jan) of heart failure and "massive brain injury"... Of course no man is immortal, but damn.

His attack on that poor instrument made their 1966 album BLACK MONK TIME one of the finest, weirdest, most awesome bit of amphetamine stomp ever recorded. And as the classic German TV footage shows (see the link), the man had a blast doing it.

Everyone's favorite horoscope:

14th at Q Street NW, Washington DC.

Behold the Death Bag.

After the crushing failure of our last experiment with fly-killing technology, we're trying a new one. THE DEATH BAG. It's FINAL SOLUTION time, brothers and sisters... Oscar the gargoyle will survey the carnage and, as before, I'll probably blog about it incessantly. Probably with bar-charts and line-graphs analyzing the inevitable body-count.

We live in very dangerous times, and much fly-blood will be spilled before a new era can begin. We shall reclaim the back yard from the nasty mob-rule of Lucilia sericata. Stay tuned...

Lord of the Flies: Mission is Terminated

For the backstory on this, see this post, and its follow-up.

As of today, 2june07, the bodycount has not improved much. The much-anticipated devastating holocaust has become just an amusing anecdote of failure, adrift in a tiny, irony-soaked blog.....just pixels in the wind, my friends.

We bagged just one more fly since last report, and alas, another gorgeous spider has fallen to my thirst for blood and violence...another innocent non-combatant. As instructed, I faithfully swished, swirled, and agitated the "attractant" liquid mixture, to keep it fresh and appealing to all enemy flies. I agitated and agitated, until my agitator was sore. But alas, it was not enough. And so, having abandoned The Device, the attractant has turned a foul shade of rust, and the few victims mock me from their fetid, fluid grave.

I'm folding up my maps and shuttering the war room. The Mission is Terminated.

Perhaps we'll amass a new arsenal of weaponry, and launch a new offensive. But for the moment, no extended tours at the front. We're bringing the troops home.

Lord of the Flies: Bodycount report no.1

We at IntangibleArts HQ have been bombarded with urgent requests for updates, following our deployment of a certain chemical warfare agent last week. Read the back-story here.

The agent was deployed almost exactly one week ago, at 3:35pm on Sunday, 13may07. I expected a bloodbath. I sat in my comfy chair inside, and craned my neck to hear the gasping despair of the newly doomed...

But no such gasping despair came.

None came, in fact, for nearly four days. I checked on The Weapon at 1:15pm on Thursday 17may07, and discovered only three small casualties, and they didn't even appear to be flies. They appeared to be FLEAS, actually. Three tiny bodies with teardrop wings. But where are the accursed Green Bottle-Flies? THEY are the ones whose blood I intended to spill.

The first bottlefly fell sometime during the later afternoon hours that same day. I estimate 4:30, Thursday 17may07.

Perhaps that was the magic bullet, because two more have fallen since then. BUT, in the intoxicating madness that can only be described as The Fog of War, an innocent non-combatant was terminated. A large black spider was discovered in the muck today, alongside the flies and (possible) fleas. Time of death must have been sometime Sunday morning, 20may07.


If we have anything to learn from America's recent military history, it's that innocent blood will always be spilled when the battleground comes home, and tactics turn from conventional fighting to guerilla warfare. That poor spider didn't need to meet this kind of end.

But we must choke back our tears and tighten our boot-laces, for the war is long from over. We're in it to win it, and there must be thirty five billion bottle-flies out there who will soon, swiftly, meet their maker.

Thus far, the rather disappointing bodycount is as follows:
POSSIBLE FLEAS: 2
BOTTLE FLIES: 3
BIGASS SPIDER (noncombatant): 1

Lord of the Flies

Phaenicia sericata, most commonly known as the Green Bottle-Fly, is actually quite a beautiful specimen, with its metallic green exoskeleton and bright red compound eyes. It is found across the globe, and is fond of all things rancid: dead animals, excrement, rotten food, etc. These materials make superior venues for laying eggs, as they provide warmth and nutrients for the young hatchlings.

In our back yard, they've had a population explosion. And yes, we pick up after the dog, regularly. But phaenicia sericata is a fast little bastard. They've set up shop and are having quite a party back there.

Enter the Captivator (TM) Fly Trap, as manufactured by Farnham Horse Products of Phoenix, AZ. We stumbled upon this product at a local big-box pet retailer (name withheld: they get enough advertising airtime), and decided to give it a try.

Being an obsessive/compulsive type with a flair for morbid humor, I decided to document this in the name of consumer reporting. Thus, on a regular basis, I will provide progress reports and bodycounts of flies terminated. Perhaps this will be useful to someone out there. If the Captivator (TM) does well, perhaps the Farnham company can contact me. For an enormous fee, I will test their other products here.

That's the setup. Now let's get down to some serious fly-killing.

The Captivator consists of a plastic jar with vented screw-top lid, which enables the scented bait to vent outward, and doomed flies to venture inward. The actual contents of the sealed tube of bait is something of a mystery. But yes, it does smell horrific. Mom used to say, medicine MUST taste bad. It means it's working.

To deploy the weapon, one should wear protective rubber gloves. Twist open the tube of Mysterious Bait Substance and squirt its contents into the empty jar. Then, fill the jar halfway with clean water. Agitate the water to dilute the bait evenly. Then, screw the lid tightly and open the vented lid. Place the unit on the ground, or hang from a line to within 4 feet of the ground. We've opted for this hanging method of deployment. See inset photo. Click for enlargement.

The Captivator was deployed at exactly 3:35pm on Sunday, 13may07, suspended 3 feet above the backyard flowerbed by a line of fashionable brown suede...

Note to self: We really must buy some STRING someday. It's quite useful stuff, certainly, but who actually seeks out STRING, deliberately?

So now, we wait. I will document our progress with frightening detail, and with any luck, word will spread among the phaenicia sericata community of Washington DC, that our home is a place of terror...a place of confinement...a place of suffocation and death.

Stay tuned. This could get very interesting.