Mount Shasta, CA March 1 (Mayday! Mayday! Mayday!), 2007, 5:15pm: When I was in the checkout line at Ray’s Supermarket, the serious young man asked me a question:

“Paper or plastic?”

I told him that I would take plastic, because it was very bad for the environment, and I wanted to do my part by helping him to clear out some of it. He looked at me, puzzled.

“It’s a joke, young man,” I said. “It doesn’t actually mean anything at all.”

He became pensive, or maybe he was thinking about something else, or perhaps he was reviewing the multiplication tables or the periodic table, or possibly wondering about dinner.

And so I explained it for him. (It is good to do this for the young people around us, so that we can enrich their lives, and some day they in turn can pass these wisdoms on to those younger still.)

“You see,” I said, “as you grow older, you’ll discover that, more and more things around you seem funny.”

He still looked puzzled, or perhaps concerned. I went on.

“In fact,” I said, “by the time you become very old, nearly all of life seems to be kind of a joke.”

He looked definitely worried now. I summed it up for him.

“That’s one of the reasons people die,” I said. “They just get tired of laughing.”

Back in 1970, as you will recall, Timothy Leary got busted and was sent to jail, as is fitting and proper for what our honest and insightful President Nixon described as “the most dangerous man in America.”

And as perhaps you know, Leary escaped from the jail. Some accounts mentioned levitation, but probably you don’t believe that. In fact, probably you were wondering how he escaped, really. You were, weren’t you? Wondering?

Well, it’s very simple …

As perhaps you are aware, prisons nowadays are very scientific, and they use psychological tests, for example to help them determine how trustworthy some incarcerated prisoner is likely to be. To determine how likely they are to escape, for example.

In Leary’s case, as per their normal procedure, they gave him such a test.

But of course you should remember that Leary was a psychologist, and in fact the initial LSD experiments he and Richard Alpert made were with prison inmates, so Leary knew a bit about prisons.

And of course, it helped tremendously that, 20 years earlier, Leary was in fact the psychologist who had written the test they gave him.

So, just as you or I would have done, he filled in the answers appropriate for a guy who wouldn’t try to escape, and therefore they trusted him, so later he just walked away.

So much easier than levitation, don’t you think?

Tibet, Long Ago: There once was a monastery where the monks were not allowed to speak at all, except that every five years, if he wished to do so, each monk was permitted to speak two words. And so it was that, after his five years, the newest monk went to see the head monk.

“Very well,” said the head monk. “What are the two words you’d like to speak?”

“Bed … hard,” said the monk.

“I see,” replied the head monk.

Five years later, the same monk returned to the head monk’s office. “It has been five more years,” said the head monk. “What are the two words you would like to speak?”

“Food … stinks,” said the monk.

“I see,” replied the head monk.

And when another five years had passed, and the monk once again met with the head monk, the head monk asked, “What are your two words now, after these five years?”

“I … quit!” said the monk.

“Well, I can see why,” replied the head monk. “All you ever do is complain.”