Now, before certain readers out there go all NARC on my ass, let me say that I make it a point to stay away from hard drugs. No coke, no herion…nothing that’s genetically altered to speed me towards an early death. I like to stick to the hippie stuff; weed, shrooms, hashish…you know, things that come from nature. And I’m very careful about who I purchase this stuff from. Those of us that partake in these sorts of relaxation techniques should always be careful about that sort of thing. People are a**holes.

Right, so public service announcement over. What I’m really writing about is this article I recently read on Salon.com about Salvia, a hallucinogenic substance that’s illegal in about 10 states and is probably going to be made illegal in a bunch more very soon. According to the author of the article (and a few friends of mine), Salvia is super potent — but only for 5 to 10 minutes. Apparently, you will trip off your ass and see the weirdest sh*t in the world (including Aztec Gods…or at least that’s what the writer saw), but it’ll all be over in minutes.

Lots of people want Salvia banned because, well, I mean…it can basically be classified as a drug, and if weed is going to be criminalized, allowing Salvia to be bought over the internet kind of makes the whole keep pot illegal argument look stupid.

Based on the descriptions in the Salon article, and descriptions from my friends (“I was sitting inside the sun, dude. Like, literally inside the sun. It was all round and hot. Like SO hot. And crazy BRIGHT!! How did I not go BLIND?!“), I’m not really eager to jump on the Salvia bandwagon. It sounds a little too intense for my taste. I smoke to relax, not travel to the 5th dimension, and any trip that people recommend having a “sober buddy around” for is not a trip I really want to be taking.

Have any of you ever had experiences with Salvia? Do you think it should be illegal?

The author of the article had a strange family (read: possible incest? he’s not sure) and he’d lost touch with his sister, who only called his mother once in a while to report that she had some fabulous job.

And then…he saw his sister’s picture in a porn magazine.

It all spiraled down from there. Guilt. Embarrassment. Horror. I mean, you name it. What struck me the most, however, was the sister’s relationship to her family in relation to what she did. She basically just disappeared from sight.

At first, I thought that was pretty awful of her. I mean, she should at least give her family the chance to understand, right? Shouldn’t she give them the opportunity to show her that they love her no matter what she does?

But then I got to thinking what it must be like to be a pornstar. Imagine people recognizing you on the street and knowing what you look like underneath that crisp interview suit? Imagine them eyeing you while you’re on a date at some nice candlelit restaurant?

And of course some people get off on that. I totally get it. I can be somewhat of an exhibitionist myself…But how would a pornstar relate to her family? Specifically her father?

I know it sounds weird and old fashioned and gross, but your father forms your idea of men, right? He’s the male figure you hold all men against. So if you’re having sex for money (or fame), how do you look your dad in the eye and say, “It has nothing to do with you?”

To be honest, if I was doing porn, I think I’d lie about it. Like the girl in the article, I’d probably make up jobs to account for my income. And if I were discovered by a family member, I am almost positive I would disappear too. I can’t imagine a way that I would tell my parents I was doing porn that wouldn’t completely hurt their feelings, after all these years of working to give me a better life than they had. Which is what parents generally try to do.

I don’t have any moral objection to being a porn star. In fact, for some women, it’s probably as good as it’s gonna get [provided the sex is safe sex]. But how, how, how do you deal with your family?

Apparently, our generation is all about the “I Love Me.”

According to the people behind the research, today’s 18-25 year olds are more narcissistic than any previous generation: “Today’s young people — schooled in the church of self-esteem, vying for spots on reality television, promoting themselves on YouTube — are more narcissistic than their predecessors.”

I find this completely unfair. Just because I can’t walk by a mirror without looking at my reflection does not make me a narcissist. Just because I look at myself first…and last…every time I look at a picture does not make me a narcissist. And just because I think I am hilarious and talented and write a blog that I expect everyone to adore doesn’t make me a narcissist.

Ok. Maybe I do think about myself quite a bit.

But it’s not my fault that I was raised in a generation in which parents told children they could do anything, be anything, and they should never doubt themselves. We have been told our whole lives that anything is attainable and, more recently, that nothing is sexier on a woman than confidence. How, then, can I now be blamed for being confident?

Sure, our generation seems more into ourselves than ever before, but that is from an older (and outsider) perspective. Previous generations weren’t given the same tools as us. We can’t be blamed for growing up in a time when outlets (MySpace, Facebook, blogging…) were created specifically for us to talk about ourselves.

Plus, the people conducting this research didn’t have to deal with the amount of competition we face daily. With so many people vying for the same schools, jobs and clubs, we have to be confident and focused on ourselves in order to succeed.

So, if our generation seems a little more obsessed with the “Me” than those before us, it is not our fault. And it’s not necessarily such a bad thing. A little self-love never hurt anybody. And, in such a cut-throat culture, if we don’t love ourselves who will love us?

Sesame Street is no longer safe for kids.In a hilarious New York Times article, Virginia Heffernan jokes about the very real warning on the DVD for volumes 1 and 2 of Sesame Street: “These early ‘Sesame Street’ episodes are intended for grown-ups, and may not suit the needs of today’s preschool child.”

After subjecting herself and friends to an “all-ages” screening of the 1970’s version of the kids show, Heffernan bemoaned the “damage” the show’s gritty early years caused her psyche.

“The show rolled, and the sweet trauma came flooding back. What they did to us was hard-core. Man, was that scene rough. The masonry on the dingy brownstone at 123 Sesame Street, where the closeted Ernie and Bert shared a dismal basement apartment, was deteriorating. Cookie Monster was on a fast track to diabetes. Oscar’s depression was untreated. Prozacky Elmo didn’t exist.”

Even though I was nothing but a faraway dream in the 70’s, I remember tuning into Sesame Street during my early years, somewhere around 1986. While I’m pretty sure Elmo had been ‘born’ by then, the images my pre-school eyes witnessed were not the saccharin filled pictures that flood PBS today.

Heffernan’s Sesame Street may have been gritty, but mine was terrifying.

First of all, does anyone remember the segments that featured a giant, fang-bearing blue wolf? (if not, check out the horror here) Whenever this wolf came on the screen, my brother and I would scream and run from the living room. I was petrified, and to this day my bro swears he used to have night terrors that revolved around “a big blue snout pushing open [his] closet door”.

Second, the Cookie Monster of my youth was not the put-together guy he is now. That growly voice, those googly eyes that just wouldn’t stop rolling, and an insatiable appetite, combined to make the perfect mixture for nightmares. I mean, if there was a monster living under my bed, I was pretty sure it looked and acted like Cookie Monster—except cookies were replaced with the desire for human flesh.

Thirdly, and most scarringly, was the segment I came to tearfully call “the scary aliens”. To this day, the palpable, body-numbing fear of seeing this segment is still one of the strongest childhood memories I have. Looking back, it makes perfect sense why trippy muppets that were all mouth and no body scared the bejeezus out of me. They flew around, had loud and uncontrolled voices, and stared at things with giant, unfocused eyes. Coked-out monsters who could hover. Frightening.

I don’t tune into Sesame Street anymore (I’ve got more mature things to watch. Like SpongeBob), but considering the “nobody-loses-and-we’re-all-so-special” society we live in today, I’m pretty sure the psychedelic, freaky episodes of my youth have been done away with.

Too bad the memories will never die.

What about you? Did you parents accidentally scare you for life by plunking you in front of good, quality children’s television? Let’s commiserate.