Sunday, May 28, 2006

Shroom Guardian - Selections

… with great certainty they will detail how mushrooms were used in prehistoric religious ceremonies, inspiring the building of stone circles at Avebury and Stonehenge and the Aztec pyramids at Teotihuacán. They will tell you how Plato, among others, drank mushroom tea; how mushrooms were eaten by the shadowy Celts and their Druidic priests, by the Vikings to access their jingoistic rages, and then later by the medieval witches in their secretive moonlight sabbats. They will happily explain the figure of Father Christmas, who is in fact a magic mushroom in disguise.

… "Given the high price of getting the decision wrong (a slow and painful death in the case of the death cap, Amanita phaloides), blanket avoidance of all mushrooms is the most sensible and reasonable option,"

… But our ancestors were generally illiterate, forbidden to question authority and had no grasp of scientific methodology. Hence rather than being naturally drawn to experiment with drug-rich mushrooms, the reverse was true. The same argument applies to edible species.

There is a kaleidoscope of things out there to keep us amused.

2 Comments:

At Tuesday, May 30, 2006 3:49:00 AM, Blogger anchovy said...

This reminds me of an idea that I always found amusing: presumably someone had to be the first to try every food we now take for granted as safe. Right? Some daring soul had to take a nibble from that weird neon orange root we now call a carrot, not knowing if it might prove the genesis of a slow and torturous death spiral.

I always thought a better writer than myself could make a great comedy sketch out of this. Please let SNL know.

 
At Tuesday, May 30, 2006 10:09:00 AM, Blogger jj mollo said...

Hunger is a great educator.

My idea of comedy is pretty dry, tongue planted firmly in cheek. I'm not above a little grim delectable, however. The idea of a hungry Blackadder, during his Druid phase, feeding them to his assistant, appeals to me, especially if he feeds the good one to his assistant and eats the bad one.

My own theory is that people tried all this stuff originally wondering whether it could be made into alcohol.

 

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