[chris (OP)]

A person shares roughly 60% of their genes with a banana. Looking at some people, that figure may even be higher !

[)]

[Donnah]

Then there's the "skins" who try to trip you up.

[Exodus]

What is the idea of bananas slipping you up, i tried to slide on one and just made a complete mess of my shoe... load of rubbish! you'd expect better of something with 60% of our genes! [!]

Thats Economics...

[chris (OP)]

I have a vague idea (from somewhere) that ships were launched on banana skins in the past, hence the countless cartoons which alude to people slipping on them. I agree, in terms of slippery-ness they are rubbish.

Anyone know if the ships idea of mine is fact, or just fantasy ?

Chris

[Donnah]

WOW, that's a lot of bananas[]!  Maybe the ship launch idea was the inspiration for Harry Chapin's song 50,000 Pounds of Bananas.

[pat]

Some mates of mine used to say that dried bananas, when smoked, could be hallucinogenic.

This sounds like cobblers, but is it true or even potentially true ?

Cheers,

Pat

[Exodus]

well, this is quite a funny story Pat...
Me and some friends were on one of our field trips to Wales looking at the rocks from Silurian to Tertiary periods. The evenings were rather boring with a fuzzy telly and darkness by 6ish so we thought one evening that we'd see if this banana idea was true...

Unfortunately we didnt have the foresight to put a banana out to dry, so being industrious students, we put a banana in the microwave. Its the only time i've ever seen something glow in the microwave and it started to burn... (it was finally dry!! [8D] ). We then ground it up and put it in a Rizzla and lit it, well it doesnt work, in fact its bloody horrid!!

Instead, we decided to feed it to one of my drunk friends (he'd had 3 cans of special brew! - central heating for tramps). To cut a long story short, he ended up getting diarrhea and spent the next day in the field walking funny... since then, he has had a particular nickname which i cant really mention...

Hope this answers your question in a very roundabout way.


Essentia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem...

[Nytmare_Muise]

Hey all im new here but i have alot of input, the stories about smoking bananas to get high are very true.  Only theres one little problem. You need 15 pounds of the fruit and scrape all the stuff from the insides of the peelings (not the actual meat of the banana just the insides) and put them in an oven on low until they are completely dried out.. it will take about 4 "joints" of this stuff to do anything

"Do or do not, there is no try" ~Yoda

[OmnipotentOne]

Now I wonder how you found out that little tid bit[]

To see a world in a grain of sand.

[Ians Daddy]

Chris,
Being ex-naval, I have a few pieces of knowlege about oranges, bananas and ships. You're right about the ships being "slipped" on bananas. Very good. As far as oranges go, well, they just have navals.

Time flies like an arrow....Fruit flies like...bananas.

On the hallucinogenic properties of bananas, this is also correct. It takes tons of bananas and lots of time as Nytmare stated. Now, someone told me that the old song by Donovan, "Mellow Yellow" was about smokin' bananas. If I try to recall some lyrics in my head and sing it over the voices that are also in my head, it says, "They call it mellow yellow... Quite right SLICK". Connection? Perhaps. Conspiracy? Certainly.

Just a (cough cough) thought,

Ronnie

[Ylide]

The music of Donovan itself could be considered drug paraphernelia in some parts of the country.  



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[Limpet chicken]

It is utter bunk that there is any psychoactive compound in banana skins, that rumor was started, or at least perpetuated by the cretinous living brain tumor that wrote "the anarchist's cookbook"

The guy has no chemical knowledge whatsoever, and almost he entirety of his crapbook and others like it is wholly incorrect, and what little factual information in them is innaccurately put, or else copied verbatim from another source.

That is the guy that reputedly told people that salt is an explosive if you heat it, because it releases Na and Cl in the elemental state (it doesn't), an utter and total moron </rant>

Apparently though, banana skins contain a high level of serotonin
(4-HO-tryptamine) which could be responsible for the myth, however even neat serotonin, unless injected directly into the brain (a bad idea[:p]) will not cause any pleasure, as the hydroxyl group prevents transport past the blood-brain barrier, in addition, I imagine baking banana skins to ashes would decompose the serotonin any way, as many tryptamines are quite delicate.

(with exceptions of course, such as n,n-dimethyltryptamine which can be smoked, and the other n,n-dialkyl tryptamines.

Non omnis moriar, tenebris e lumen.