Do not read swissinfo story, it's suck. Scroll down for better. But GAE OUI JA SI for same-sex partners!

First they give women the vote (1971). Then they make pot legal (actually they sell it all over the place as herbal medicine -- PATS PUB WHAT'S THE STORY? PLS CONTACT EDITOR!). Then they re-legalize The Green Fairie, l'Heure Verte -- that's French for "Extremely Happy Hour."

Now this. What next? Prohibition of the Alpenhorn? No more yodeling? Who knows where all this will end?

Now I got to visit this place, too. First: Thun. Then some forest where Russian diplomat's wife and kiddies pick wild mushrooms, I think the Elfenau. I been reading John leCarre spy novels much too much.

Hey! Man On The Ground! Also what's the story with the mushrooms? Do people still pick them in Mitteleuropa? More to the point -- do they still EAT them? I heard the entire hobby vanished after Chernobyl (which means the foxglove plant, also containing Fun ©™®). SciAm had a mycologist who wrote an irregular column and referred to the hobby as "An Adventure in Eating." In an Agatha Christie mystery, a physician explains what's about to happen to a hospital patient who ate the Amanita. Tomorrow you'll feel you've completely recovered. You'll feel elated, euphoric. The next day you'll die. Nothing can be done about it, your liver has been destroyed.

A Mitteleuropa family was found dead around the dinner table after a collecting party in the forest, except Grandma. She just never liked mushroom soup.

William S. Burroughs was so inspired by the William Tell story that when he and his wife would get drunk at parties, they would "do the William Tell thing" to amuse the other partygoers. Only instead of crossbow, Burroughs would use a revolver. His wife stood against the wall and used the traditional Apfel aus der Kopf. Anyway, one night, in Mexico City ...

The next chapter of the Burroughs saga takes place in North Africa, in a place called Interzone. For a magical wonderful period of about 5 years immediately after the end of World War II, Interzone had about as many Laws and Rules as der Stadt Mahagonny, which is in Alabama. Money would solve all problems, and there was Free Delivery for anything you could pronounce. Burroughs was an heir to the estate of his grampa who invented the modern mechanical office calculator, and received about $35 a month for life, like clockwork. First, after Harvard, this was a fortune during the Depression. In Interzone, it was a Triple or Quadruple Fortune. (In Mexico probably only a double fortune.)

Paul Bowles (a composer of neo-classical music, then a novelist, then a collector of the marvelous oral tales, Kindermarche, Hausmarche and fables of North Africa) and some other expats and fugitives took an interest in Burroughs, and while he lay in a corner, the friends pulled a mess of typed papers out of Burroughs' boxes and suitcases and with paste and scissors put something together and called it "Naked Lunch." Or maybe Burroughs woke up briefly, examined the thing, and spake the title for it. Well, he had typed it, they were pretty sure of that. They put his name on it.

Recently Penguin issued the scholarly variorum annotated 50th Anniverary Edition of Burroughs' first novel, "Junkie," which originally he and Ace paperbacks were too terrified to use his real name, so first edition is by "Bill Lee" and has the most wonderfully lurid cover, hot 1950s sweater babe with rubber tube tied around arm, etc. Ace was the only house with the nerve to publish it; New Directions ("Nude Erections," Ezra Pound called them) wouldn't touch it; that would have been Much Too New a Direction in 1953 USA; it made "Lolita" look like a Disney movie. Peter Weller plays the Burroughs creature in the pretty damn spiffy, wild and wholly unexpected movie about typewriters which are secretly talking cockroaches. It's a Cronenberg, rent it or not. If not, more for me. I don't think any other movie ever made even hints that once upon a time Interzone really existed. Here you get to rent a small apartment, meet the neighbors, wander through the casbah, etc.

Ace of course was famous for twinning two crappy novels, usual sci-fi, upside-down from each other. To be Fair and Balanced, they sent "Junkie" into literary history upside-down with the authentic memoirs of a federal narcotics agent. Just Say Ja on one side, Just Say Nein on the flip side. I can't even Google the other author or book; if you can, please leave a Comment.

Burroughs died tragically young, from a life of heroin addiction, pan-hedonism and sexual abandon, at age 83, in his hometown of Lawrence, Kansas, the state university town. I wonder what the fuck the Lawrence P.D. made of The Return of This Native. Every time the SWAT Team got ready to crash the door down, they would be interrupted by another literary reporter from The New York Review of One Another's Books, or Harper's, there to interview The Great Man.

Let that be a lesson to all young people out there, a cautionary tale. Whatever you're thinking about -- don't.

As a child, Burroughs had a nanny who told him that opium gave you beautiful dreams. As soon as he was graduated from Harvard (English major, because it required the least effort), he headed for New York City to try some. There's almost never any opium in the USA, so he had to settle for injectible heroin.

I wish I could say I was making all this up, but my imagination isn't nearly as good as Burroughs' real life, or the novels that came out of his head and fingers. If you think I'm making all this up, that's fine with me. But leave a Comment, like "That can't possibly be true, none of it."

If the heroin is of consistent strength and uncontaminated, the primary medical consequence of any opiate is constipation. Prison is the primary life-threatening consequence of opiate use and addiction in the USA.

* * * * * * * * * * *

Swiss vote to join Schengen area

Swiss choose cooperation over isolation

Gay couples win partnership rights

swissinfo: The Swiss news and information platform from swissinfo/Swiss Radio International.
swissinfo: News and information about Switzerland.

Monday 06.06.2005, CET 10:35

Press applauds "yes" to Schengen/Dublin

June 6, 2005 8:23 AM

The Swiss press hailed the
The Swiss press hailed the "yes" vote (swissinfo)

The Swiss press has welcomed Sunday's nationwide vote in favour of the Schengen/Dublin treaties governing closer cooperation with the European Union.

But the media has warned that September’s vote on extending the free movement of people to the ten new EU member states will prove to be a stiffer test of public opinion.

"Switzerland has destroyed a frontier," was the title of the Geneva-based Le Temps.

"With a 54.6 per cent yes vote, the government can breathe a sigh of relief without crowing about it," said the paper.

According to Le Quotidien Jurassien, "reason and wisdom" carried the day.

Both the Neue Zürcher Zeitung (NZZ) and the Tages-Anzeiger called the decision a "further pragmatic step" for bilateral relations with the EU.

The Tages-Anzeiger noted that the atmosphere ahead of the nationwide vote "couldn’t have been more exciting" after the recent rejection of the EU constitution by France and the Netherlands.

Le Temps said that the vote had split the country along tradition lines, with western Switzerland in favour and eastern Switzerland -- with the exception of Zurich and Zug - against.

But the paper also said the "no" camp, headed by the rightwing Swiss People’s Party, had lost support.

Lost support

The mass-circulation Blick agreed, calling the vote "a black Sunday for the People’s Party".

It said that the People’s Party -- which ran an emotive campaign against Schengen/Dublin in the run-up to the vote -- had attempted to turn the vote into a referendum on whether Switzerland should join the EU.

"The people gave a clear answer, and not in the way that the People’s Party wanted: 'yes’ to a security policy with the EU," said the Blick.

Many of the French- and Italian-speaking newspapers made similar comments in their editorials.

Next step

The German-speaking dailies seemed to be more concerned about the next step -- the September vote on whether to extend an existing accord with Brussels on the free movement of people to include citizens from the ten new EU member states.

"No breathing space after the 'yes’ to Schengen," warned the Tages-Anzeiger on its front page, while the Basler Zeitung said the "fight" had "just begun".

The Basel-based paper added that the September vote would be about jobs and the conflict would be "fiercer and the outcome closer".

The Tages-Anzeiger said the campaign ahead of the free movement of people vote could be used by opponents of closer ties with EU for more scaremongering -- just as in the Schengen/Dublin vote.

"The grimaces on the posters and the absurd slogans ('Schengen brings unemployment’) were a taste of what’s to come in the next campaign."

The NZZ said supporters of September’s vote would have to send a clearer message about the benefits of signing up to the accord.

International view

The vote also aroused interest in the international press. The Financial Times noted that the Swiss "narrowly supported" closer EU links and that the result "pointed to greater tensions in the next big referendum" - a reference to September's vote.

"This issue is more controversial than the one taken yesterday - and could have even more serious consequences in the case of a 'no'," it said, adding that this could throw the whole package of bilateral treaties with the EU into doubt.

For the International Herald Tribune, the result went against the prevailing mood in the EU but showed how things were changing in a country which fiercely safeguards its neutrality.

Meanwhile, the London-based Times said Switzerland "had expressed a measure of confidence" in the EU.

"Contrary to expectations, the French and Dutch rejections of the EU constitution may have made the EU more attractive to the Swiss, who seem to view the results either as a protest against European enlargement or against the formation of a European superstate."

Registered partnerships

Sunday’s other vote - 58 per cent vote in favour of registered gay partnerships - was also welcomed, although it received far fewer column inches than the Schengen/Dublin referendum.

Most newspapers said that the "yes" vote showed the emergence of a tolerant modern society, which had rejected the hardline arguments of the "no" camp.

"Homosexuals are not just tolerated, they will now be considered a minority that is recognised by society," wrote the French-speaking La Liberté. "That, essentially, is what the vote on registered partnerships this weekend was all about."

swissinfo, Isobel Leybold-Johnson

Key Facts

The Swiss electorate has approved membership of the EU's Schengen/Dublin accords with 54.6% in favour.

A new law on registering same-sex partnerships was approved by 58.03%.

Turnout in Sunday's vote was higher than average at 55.9%.

In Brief
Under the Schengen treaty Switzerland will abandon identity checks on its borders. But it will gain access to a Europe-wide crime database.

This is likely to take place in 2007.

The Dublin accord allows the Swiss to turn away asylum seekers who have already filed a request in another signatory country.

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