Life Have a Shroomy Day
posted by on December 19 at 15:34 PM
A reader read my feature on mushroom hunting in Astoria this week and wrote in. She said some nice things about the writingthanks!and then went on to say:
But as an amateur mycologist, I have to say one thing: YOU FREAKING IDIOT. You trusted a community-college dropout you’ve never met to make judgments that could affect the rest of your life? For a five-hour trip? But even more irresponsibly, you described psilocybes just enough to make some readers think they too could go mushroom-hunting. Mushrooms containing psilocin and psilocybin are poisonousit’s the poison that makes you trip. The difference between the kind of poison that makes you trip and the kind of poison that makes you die cannot be ascertained by someone without a deep knowledge of mycology and extensive field experience. If you’re fascinated by the idea of mushroom-hunting (it is great fun), you should join the local mycological society and go on a few innocent field trips. Absorb a general knowledge about the identifying characteristics of mushrooms. To get into hallucinogens, type ‘psilocybin mushrooms’ into Amazon.com, buy a couple of the guidebooks available, read them, and study the pictures. Learn enough to realize how much you DON’T know. Then take your guidebook and the comprehension that you’re playing Russian roulette, and go hunting if you want…
I’m a freaking idiot? Agreed. Although in my defense, I knew I was being a freaking idiot the whole time. And, knowing I was being a freaking idiot and going through with it in spite of the knowing about the being of a freaking idiot was part of what the story was about. (It’s sort of like Captain Jonathan Thorn of the Tonquin knowing full well that it wasn’t a good idea to trade with the natives of Vancouver Island in the early summer of 1811 but doing so anyway, because he wanted to, because he’d gotten it into his head that he was going toalas, he ended up clubbed in the back of the head, stabbed to death, and thrown over the side of his ship.) Anyway, your point is well taken, and I hope people don’t read the piece and get inspired to be idiots.
On the other hand, the author of Mushroom John’s Shroom World, a website I quoted from in the piece, just called to say that looking for and eating blue-stemming mushroomsthe stems go blue when they start to decompose, which happens within minutesisn’t all that dangerous because this attribute separates them from other kinds of mushrooms, including deadly poisonous ones. “The bluing in these mushrooms, it’s very evident,” he said. So I couldn’t have died doing this after all? “You could have died relying on someone who was with you who didn’t know a lot about what they’re doing. The person who was taking you around, I don’t think he was much of an expert.” Which is true.
“But overall I enjoyed the article. I just had one similar published in Shroom Talk,” he said. And he wished me to “have a shroomy day.”
PS: Here’s the website of the Puget Sound Mycological Society, purveyor of innocent field trips, classes, mushroom recipes, etc.
I enjoyed the piece, but also have a question: What's with the paragraph-length sentences? On top of which, not only the paragraph-length sentences but the calling attention to and self-consciousness about the paragraph-length sentences? To tell you the truth, I hadn't really noticed until your "how are these long, loopy sentences treating you, by the way?" comment, after which all I could was scan each paragraph for periods, which made it hard to pay attention to the story - which was interesting and mostly well-written, by the way.
Just wondering.
It was a trip, Levislade. Christopher eats the mushrooms and begins the next segment: "Astoria began with a bad trip."
Nothing is more boring than other people's dreams and hallucinations. Christopher's intent, if I may be so bold, was to take us on a trip of our own—we come out the other end, with him, exhausted and thinking about all the strange things we've just seen: knives, otters, deadly waves, explosions.
i have to say, this story brought me back to the halcyon days of six years ago...shrooms were legal in japan while i was in high school, and it wasn't uncommon for kids to trip from homeroom through PE, glazed eyes and bad gas and all. (you didn't mention the bad gas, if i recall correctly.)
i didn't try them again until I moved back to the Southwest, and the trip consisted of chasing a black cat through some creosote and stabbing lindsay lohan's eyes out of a Mean Girls poster. la dee da. life goes on.
isn't being an idiot the sum total of the stranger's marketing plan?
oh so cool, idiot
idiot clique
idiot freaks from elsewhere
frizzy made it
Christopher,
You also described The Goonies as a “failure,” promote reading in bars and supported the war against Iraq.
Egad man, redeem yourself.
Yeah, the war-endorsing thing is going to follow me to my grave. I was being a freaking idiot. I wrote that before I understood the history of Iraq, and I was buoyed along by The New Yorker's articulate endorsement of the war (I thought it was articulate at the time), and by the inarticulate arguments of war protesters and their condescension toward troops (I'm from a military family whose idea of being "supported" is not synonymous with being "brought home"), and the idea that liberating oppressed people is the right and good thing to do (this was about as complex as my thinking got—see above about not knowing Iraq's history). I was 22 when I wrote that. I regret it to this day.
As for The Goonies, I don't know what to tell you. It's a mound of shit.
Frizzie...
I’m a freaking idiot? Agreed. Although in my defense, I knew I was being a freaking idiot the whole time.
it's called "fallacy of imitative form" ... check it out.
I am shocked, shocked I say, that someone in their 20s would take their lives in their hands and trust someone else with life or death decisions.
Hmmm. Good thing you don't know I joined the Army when I was 22 ...
Seriously, cut her a break! Want foolish? How about the guys climbing up Mount Hood with like subpar levels of gear ...
@6 - Frizzie, seriously, dude, two goose eggs on the Iraq and Goonies decisions. Reading in bars - heck, I did that when I was 22, and if people wanted to fight me over it, I tried not to, but if they persisted, I'd fight.
It's my decision what I do in a bar. So long as I'm buying beverages every so often, everyone else should chill.
So, keep reading books in bars. Flaunt it!
frizzy is a great handle
sorry, I and most of the kids i grew up with seem to have decided our positions against the death penalty and anti war in out teens
of course, we were the bright ones in high school
did the words colonialism and imperialism intrude at all while thinking of the Iraq conquest - a bit late now
frizzy, yes, it feels just right
Great. You're an idiot who _knows_ he's an idiot, which puts you in the top .01 percentile of all idiots out there.
It still doesn't make me want to read you, or care about a damn thing you say.
Must agree with Frizzy on The Goonies -- an unbelievably bad movie. However, I have never laughed so hard in a movie theater (I saw a midnight showing in Berkeley a year or two ago) as I did at the scene where the future Sam Gamgee explains how, if we don't seize the day and follow our dreams, "we're all just riding up Troy's bucket" (or something)...then caps this inspirational sentiment by taking a big hit from his asthma inhaler.
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