Getting Started

The Blog's Name

I'll be straightforward with you: I have never read The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test.  I just liked the book's name and couldn't come up with a title for my blog.  I had only a little time to set up the site, and I wasn't feeling creative-- I was feeling referential.  That does leave the fact that I knew next to nothing about the book that I was naming my blog after.

Until now.

Thanks to my good old pal Wikipedia, I am aware that the cover of the book looks like this:

And, having read further, I am aware that The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test details the life of hero Ken Kesey and his friends, the "Merry Pranksters", who do little more than go to Grateful Dead concerts in their tie-dye school bus, "Furthur", all the while tripping on insane amounts of LSD.

Think Scooby-Doo without the dog.

• Or the creepy old men in monster costumes.  
• Or the family-friendliness.  
• Or those delicious-looking Scooby Snacks. 

Back to Writing 
 
Anyway, that little nugget of late-1960's counter-culture memorabilia isn't my point-- at least not directly.  In our generation, the way we perceive the world has changed dramatically-- as has the way we read and write about it.

Consider, for a moment, this aforementioned tale of traveling and self-discovery through hallucinogenic experimentation.  Back then, the way to find yourself was to get out into the world and experience it, to break away from the familiar.  I think that starting with our generation, we have become much more likely to define ourselves through technology: we form a persona online, through Facebook, or blogs, or even creating digital "avatars" of ourselves in video games or other social websites.  

Our reading habits have become digitized as well-- more and more people are buying Nooks, Kindles, and iPads to conduct their leisure reading upon.  As these trends have become more exaggerated, the way we read and write have changed substantially.

Here's what "Uncle Stevie" has to say about the issue:
 



Food for thought.