excerpt from my book Frequencies of Consciousness:
"When I was in England, I experimented with marijuana a time or two, and I didn't like it. I didn't inhale, and never tried it again."
- Bill Clinton

Old Billy from Arkansas, the scourge of Kosovo, smoked pot in college. It seems like college is a time for that kind of thing: Discoveries about life. The problem with universities as I see them is that it’s too caught up in the competitive spirit of capitalism. In the past the idea of universities was noble. The ancient Greek gymnasiums were all about bettering yrself. Okay, the idea of universities was never noble. The concept has always been essentially flawed. It’s too coercive. There’s too much pressure to “be the best.” It’s all bullshit: Individualism and competition. College as an institution is pretty shitty, but there are fun things about it: the parties, the drinking, meeting new people, learning about life. College is a lot better than high school. It’s the lesser of two evils. High school is like prison. It’s the most restrictive organization you could put kids into next to Juvie. That’s why kids turn against each other. They come into school with guns and blast each other. People say the solution is more authority, but that is exactly the problem. The Israelis and Palestinians have been fighting for years because they don’t understand the concept that more authority is what is escalating the problem. An overabundance of authority leads to the kind of desperation that would drive someone to murder. In the words of Marilyn Manson (the poster-child for Lost Generation apathy) ‘go ahead and kill yrself, yr already dead.’ We’ve been blaming the victim for too long. Look at things sociologically, not psychologically.
The Amerikan Dream is dead. None of us really believe it anymore, but we still mindlessly repeat it until one day we snap. Mid-life crises are a form of violence. It’s people in the post-dream part of their lives lashing out at society for not fulfilling its promises of a happy life. Old men smoking grass, buying fast cars and fucking younger wimyn. Old wimyn popping Valium, drinking excessively and fucking younger men. These are cries for help. It’s desperation. Generation X is just starting to reach this stage now. What a strange time to be alive. There are snipers just randomly shooting people out of desperation. This country has perpetrated 500 years of violence against dark-skinned people – officially and unofficially. I can understand why a dark-skinned person might get a gun. Doesn’t mean I agree with it, but I understand it. And when you have a gun the next step is to use it. I don’t’ like guns, but I think if the pigs and the military are going to have guns then the people should have guns too to level the playing field a bit. I don’t give a shit about the second amendment. The constitution is a class-document that legitimized slavery. But I think that until all weapons can be destroyed those who feel the need to protect themselves should be able to. If our society weren’t so filled with fear and competition people wouldn’t be so likely to use them.