Remember when I said I was thinking of going to the Sierra Madre Mountains in Oaxaca to smoke salvia under the vigilant guidance of a shaman? Well guess what? I went. And guess who I saw? Ken Lay. I’m not even kidding. I reached the summit of Pico de Orizaba at dusk on tuesday, and there, sitting by a small fire, was Gustavo Dudamel, Carlos Santana, a shaman and Kenneth Lee Lay. He introduced himself as Mitch Farber but I knew it was Ken right away. “Mitch Farber my balls!” I cried “You’re that thieving rat-bastard Ken Lay!” He scrambled to his feet and shrieked “Le Coucou! Le Coucou!” into his cufflinks and then a helicopter with a rope ladder suddenly appeared above us. Cinders from the fire were blown into Dudamel’s hair causing it to catch fire. Santana and I leapt into action, hosing him down with Gatorade while Ken scurried up the ladder and took a seat between Dick Fuld and Bernie Madoff. Oddly, the helicopter was piloted by none other than Zeena Galatea Schreck, nee LaVey (where can I find that little french hyphen?)
“I’m faking my death on December 24th!” Fuld screamed down at us, “HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!”
And then they were gone.
I didn’t end up trying salvia. I was far too bummed by the whole ordeal. Everyone was.

We got a letter today from our buddy Riles, warning us (but mostly me) to not smoke salvia-

DONT DO IT.
You ain’t no sage, and there are plenty of other ways to open up your doors of perception.
I’ll tell you two stories.
While living in Vancouver, me and 3 friends hitchhiked to the local ferry terminal then flipped a coin to see which remote gulf island we’d venture to. Ended up on Salt Spring Island, (see attached photo). All we had was an old 78 player, a video camera, a can of beans, a bag of ‘dream ‘erb’ and some Salvia that we’d purchased earlier from the back room of ‘the Urban Shaman’, a herbal high store on Vancouvers main hippie strip.
After clambering through a rusty barbed wire fence and tramping through the giant woods we found ourselves on a cliff overlooking a huge ocean inlet, surrounded by mountains, the neighbouring gulf islands. We unrolled our sleeping bags and cracked open our case of still cold Kokanees (canadas version of Bud). Got pretty toasted, talked a lot of nonsense, all the while nervously ignoring the elephant in the room; The bag of Salvia, or ‘Aunt Sylvia’ as she became known.
Finally rolled ‘er up and puffed away. We all wandered down to a large flat rock leading into the shallows of the water, which at the time was glowing bright with phosphorescents (honestly). We lay on our backs on the sloped rock, with our feet pointing up into the sky. It kind of felt like we were attached to the rock, like the earth was our backpack and we were sky walking through the cosmos, bouncing of the stars, you know what I mean?
But really, I think we were either faking it, or we were too stoned and drunk for it to really work. Either that, or we did it in a perfect setting where the effects aren’t as fucked as that guy on youtube, or as ‘Andy’ experienced….
Now to Andy.
Long before I left to go overseas, we were hanging out at a mates place after a day of skating, eating pizza, drinking, smoking weed and listening to hip hop. Man what a productive life I had back then.
Anyway, my mate Jim pulled out a mysterious little bag and gave us a quick run down on what it was. He really emphasised how unlike anything else the trip was, but Andy didn’t care. He smoked a whole cone, and instantly passed through the Stargate (I love that term by the way). We basically all had to snap into sobriety to hold and hug Andy for the next hellish 2 hours, and convince him that he was an earthly being and that he’d be back soon from wherever the fuck he was. All he could mumble through him quivering mouth was “don’t do it…nobody do it….I don’t know where i am…” over and over. He seriously left us for a while, the only trace of him on this plane was a green skinned, bug eyed and really scared dude sitting on the couch. It wore off, for sure, but until it did, he was absolutely freaked.
It’s some interplanetary shit dude, be careful.

Thats all I got.
Peace!
R-dogg