Getting Dowded

So, Maureen Dowd has become a point of not so much contention as much as fodder for satire. It began with her really not-so-innocent post where she reveals the harrowing effects of marijuana on her personally. With her usual lack of subtlety (she wouldn't have a job if she had any), she essentially quashes the idea that pot should be sold in such an appealing manner as, say, her delectable chocolate bar.

What happens next...

The New Yorker creates their own take on what Dowd might have done after the main show.

Salon gives a short review and excerpt:

What could go wrong with a paragraph or two?

Everything, as it turned out.

Just kidding. Maureen Dowd’s column did not send me into a hallucinatory state for 8 hours and leave me questioning whether or not I was dead. She just wrote a kind of confusing editorial that used a really long anecdote about her experience of being too high on pot chocolate as a way to make a point about the apparent dangers of legal pot in Colorado.

Here’s her retelling of what sounds like a pretty unpleasant experience taking drugs and rubbing her corduroy pants:

But then I felt a scary shudder go through my body and brain. I barely made it from the desk to the bed, where I lay curled up in a hallucinatory state for the next eight hours. I was thirsty but couldn’t move to get water. Or even turn off the lights. I was panting and paranoid, sure that when the room-service waiter knocked and I didn’t answer, he’d call the police and have me arrested for being unable to handle my candy.

I strained to remember where I was or even what I was wearing, touching my green corduroy jeans and staring at the exposed-brick wall. As my paranoia deepened, I became convinced that I had died and no one was telling me.

Oh dear.

The Guardian imagines a scenario where other NYT columnists take various drugs and their responses. Gawker asks readers to match drugs with NYT columnists. Some more hilarious responses can be found through the BBC.

Dickinson and Chemotherapy

In an article on the side effects of chemotherapy, Susan Gubar uses Emily Dickinson to explain one of the worst--anhedonia, 'the inability to experience pleasure from activities usually found enjoyable.'


I felt a Funeral, in my Brain (280)

I felt a Funeral, in my Brain,
And Mourners to and fro
Kept treading – treading – till it seemed
That Sense was breaking through –

And when they all were seated,
A Service, like a Drum –
Kept beating – beating – till I thought
My Mind was going numb –

And then I heard them lift a Box
And creak across my Soul
With those same Boots of Lead, again,
Then Space – began to toll,

As all the Heavens were a Bell,
And Being, but an Ear,
And I, and Silence, some strange Race
Wrecked, solitary, here –

And then a Plank in Reason, broke,
And I dropped down, and down –
And hit a World, at every plunge,
And Finished knowing – then –


© 2012, Academy of American Poets. All Rights Reserved