A suicide in Fat City *

"How many more of these goddam elections are we going to have to write off as lame but 'regrettably necessary' holding actions? And how many more of these stinking double-downer sideshows will we have to go through before we can get ourselves straight enough to put together some kind of national election that will give me at the at least 20 million people I tend to agree with a chance to vote for something, instead of always being faced with that old familiar choice between the lesser of two evils? I understand, along with a lot of other people, that the big thing, this year, is Beating Nixon. But that was also the big thing, as I recall, twelve years ago in 1960 - and as far as I can tell, we've gone from bad to worse to rotten since then, and the outlook is for more of the same."

I have been away for too long. Today was one of the better days of my life. We passed back to the Legislature the profiles for the next edition of the book. I've been hesitant to say anything about the whole adventure until after the Powers that Be approve what we wrote.

Now the deliberative body is deliberating about something far more important than the law: how they want themselves to spin, craft identity, in their profiles, whatever you want to call the process of how politicians present themselves. Working on the book looked sort of like journalism, it was really more the process of shaping the truth as they wanted it to appear.

Hunter probably would have thought it an amusing venture.

HST and the whole gonzo thing inspired me not to take vast quantities of drugs, but simply to refuse to accept the standard interpretation, to take some ground and stick with it. He was never afraid of fucking with people that shouldn't be fucked with, he was the friend and the connection between strange and crazy groups of people, he was a man who looked sideways at the spectacle and always took note of the degenerates and swine who run the spotlights.

This whole development has pitched me right back to some basic questions about myself and my motives... He was born in 1937, he saw a strange and fucked up century, he laughed at it. He stuck it out in spite of all the pomposity and evil our decadent empire could throw at him. He made it far.

NickP (DJiDontEvenGoHere to some) and I have decided to do a two-hour Hunter S Thompson tribute on my radio show this Friday at 2 to 4 PM. It can be heard online via the WMCN website or thru this nice little file here.

Seeing as how I have virtually abandoned the site with little explanation, I don't know who will actually read this, but hey, it's only Tuesday morning now.

First thing to do tomorrow is get some Wild Turkey.

(photo via gonzo.org)

* Fat City, by the way, was his proposed new name for Aspen, Colorado, when he ran for mayor on the Freak Party ticket in 1970.