The above 1966 Acid Test Diploma of Merry Prankster and Jerry Garcia's former wife Carolyn "Mountain Girl" Garcia is up for auction as part of The HeART of Rock and Roll Poster Auction. Current bid is $5,775. Over at Collectors Weekly, our pal Ben Marks puts this tattered piece of paper in context as a souvenir of a milestone event in psychedelic, counterculture , and multimedia history. "The High Price of a Degree in LSD"

Illustration: Jonathan Castro, for The Heretic

A wonderful long-read at The Morning News by Tim Doody, on 1966 LSD studies that took place as the US government's position on acid research shifted from "sure, go ahead, scientists" to "nope, this is now banned." The series of tests described in the article took place at the International Foundation for Advanced Study (IFAS) in Menlo Park, CA. Scientists from Stanford, Hewlett-Packard, and elsewhere participated. The volunteers each brought "three highly technical problems from their respective fields that they’d been unable to solve for at least several months." They took "a relatively low dose of acid," 100 micrograms, to enhance their creativity.

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Jeff Simmermon says, "Apparently [recently-departed] Sherman Hemsley was a serious acid/psych-rock fiend and had an LSD lab in his basement." From an interview with Daevid Allen of Soft Machine and Gong, which appeared in Magnet magazine:

“It was 1978 or 1979, and Sherman Hemsley kept ringing me up. I didn’t know him from a bar of soap because we didn’t have television in Spain (where I was living). He called me from Hollywood saying, ‘I’m one of your biggest fans and I’m going to fly you here and put flying teapots all up and down the Sunset Strip.’ I thought, ‘This guy is a lunatic.’ He kept it up so I said, ‘Listen, can you get us tickets to L.A. via Jamaica? I want to go there to make a reggae track and have a honeymoon with my new girlfriend.’ He said, ‘Sure! I’ll get you two tickets.’

I thought, ‘Well, even if he’s a nut case at least he’s coming up with the goodies.’ The tickets arrived and we had this great honeymoon in Jamaica. Then we caught the plane across to L.A. We had heard Sherman was a big star, but we didn’t know the details. Coming down the corridor from the plane, I see this black guy with a whole bunch of people running after him trying to get autographs. Anyway, we get into this stretch limousine with Sherman and immediately there’s a big joint being passed around. I say, ‘Sorry man, I don’t smoke.’ Sherman says, ‘You don’t smoke and you’re from Gong?’

Inside the front door of Sherman’s house was a sign saying, ‘Don’t answer the door because it might be the man.’ There were two Puerto Ricans that had a LSD laboratory in his basement, so they were really paranoid. They also had little crack/freebase depots on every floor. Then Sherman says, ‘Come on upstairs and I’ll show you the Flying Teapot room.’ Sherman was very sweet but was surrounded by these really crazy people.

Magnet: George Jefferson: World’s Biggest Gong Fan? (Via Bad Ass Digest)

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Two assholes in Georgia dropped some acid, ran naked in the streets, and dosed their pet dachsund "Oscar" (at left), who they'd just picked up only days earlier from a Georgia animal shelter. The disoriented and dosed doggie wandered into traffic and was struck dead by a car. I'm all for consenting adults having whatever fun they want with substances, but this is just awful. (source: TSG)