Say NO to drugs

Dreams are already an unusual phenomenon as is, throw in some theoretical hallucinogens and you've got a recipe for one strange night of sleep. As if my dreams needed to be any crazier than usual--they almost always involve me flying, be jealous--I had a dream last night that I did acid. Now, I've never done acid, and I plan on keeping it that way for the rest of my life, BUT I believe the acid trip I had in my dream last night was pretty legit. It was bizarre, I remember licking a bunch of acid off my finger and then floating into a magical, color filled fantasy world only to be transformed into a nightmare a few minutes later as the trip took a turn for the worse. I started to scream hysterically and the dream turned into a nightmare, but I was still on this acid trip, right? Normally, if I am having a wicked scary dream I can convince myself to wake up before I piss the bed out of sheer terror. But this dream was different, I was having a frightening acid trip and instead of waking up in my bed I woke myself out of the acid trip back into the dream world I started in. It was like a dream inside a dream (I wish Leo DiCaprio was present). Logically, after I bounced out of the trip I took another hit of acid so I could go back to the happier side of the drug induced dream. Dream Brice lives on the wild side. In this next acid trip, I called pretty much all my friends in my phone book and left a bunch of strange and embarrassing voice mails. Once that acid trip was over I was tasked with mending the friendships and piecing together what I had done while reenacting Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. A simple task thanks to my experience at Pc.

Well, I didn't come here just to tell y'all about what it is like to take acid (hypothetically), but because I stumbled upon an interesting quote last night. When I have some spare time, or need to pass time while I wait for the newest episode of True Blood to download, I enjoy watching TED Talks. I know, sooo white. Whatever, they are almost always incredibly interesting. The one I watched last night was entitled "Embracing Otherness, Embracing Myself" by Thandie Newton. She had a few interesting points about the idea of the "self", but mostly it sounded like a conversation you have with a friend over a beer trying to find the meaning of life. Anyways, she had an interesting take on Race and I thought I would share it here because these days there is a lot of talk and gripe about people of various ethnicity and nationality. Foolish talk if you ask me. Nonetheless, here is what Thandie said:

I applied to read anthropology at University. At my interview, the professor asked me "How would you define Race?" Well, I thought I had the answer to that one and I said, "Skin color."
"So, biology, genetics," she said, "because, Thandie that's not accurate, there's actually more genetic difference between a black Kenyan and a black Ugandan than there is between a black Kenyan and a white Norwegian. Because we all stem from Africa, so in Africa there's been more time to create genetic diversity. In other words, Race has no basis in biological or scientific fact."
What is based on biological and scientific fact is that we all stem from Africa. So, Race is an illegitimate concept which ourselves have created based on fear and ignorance.

Maybe you agree with her, maybe you don't, but it's nice to have perspective.

Brice