Post #195,708
2/21/05 12:17:26 AM
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What in the...?
Seen in the top red bar on CNN, just before shutting down for bed tonight: BREAKING NEWS
\t
Journalist-author Hunter S. Thompson has died of what investigators suspect was a self-inflicted gunshot wound. Details soon. As it says, I certainly have no more details. Just figured that some folks here respected the man... -YendorMike
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
- Benjamin Franklin, 1759 Historical Review of Pennsylvania
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Post #195,709
2/21/05 12:25:08 AM
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More.
[link|http://www.denverpost.com/Stories/0,1413,36~53~2723492,00.html|Denver Post] via Drudge.
Regards,
Scott.
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Post #195,710
2/21/05 12:36:35 AM
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jeebus fscking christ...
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas was one of the great books of its era. HST was a genius. I'm grieved that he didn't outlive a maggot like marlowe.
rc
Die Welt ist alles, was der Fall ist.
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Post #195,729
2/21/05 6:32:05 AM
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Agreed
The guy was amazing.
I have a sick hope.
I hope he was diagnosed with uncurable lung cancer (or some such illness), they gave him a few weeks to live, and he decided not to let anyone or anything take that decision away from him.
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Post #195,748
2/21/05 11:01:40 AM
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I have a sicker hope
The gunshot will turn out to have been from an aggrieved husband or someone else with a legitimate complaint about him.
Cheers,
Ben
I have come to believe that idealism without discipline is a quick road to disaster, while discipline without idealism is pointless. -- Aaron Ward (my brother)
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Post #195,809
2/21/05 5:36:55 PM
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RIP Duke :(
may you go in beauty
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Post #195,848
2/21/05 9:42:22 PM
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Suicide?
Somehow that doesn't fit in at all with my picture of the gonzo king. The story, as they say, is developing. I don't rule it out but it isn't high on my list.
-----------------------------------------
"In this world of sin and sorrow there is always something to be thankful for. As for me, I rejoice that I am not a Republican."
-- H. L. Mencken
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Post #195,879
2/22/05 2:02:29 AM
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RIP HST
A passage from his last book, Kingdon of Fear. Loathsome Secrets of a Star-Crossed Child of the Final Days of the American Century. . .
... And, in Colorado, the County Coroner is the only public official with the power to arrest the sheriff.
That is the key to my oft uttered wisdom in re: Politics is the art of controlling your environment. Indeed. Never forget it, or you will become a Victim of your environment. Rich nerds and lawyers will stomp all over you worse than any A-rab, and you will be like the eight-ball on some country-club billiards table near Atlanta -- whack, over and out. No more humor.
And so much for that, eh? Jews don't play pool anywy, and neither do A-rabs. They are tribal people, which means they are primitive thinkers. They feel a genetic imperative to kill each other, and it tends to get in their way. . . . Or maybe that brutal compulsion comes from the Holy Bible, which is definitely true. The Bible is unforgiving. There is not a scintilla of mercy or humor in the Holy Bible. None.
Think on it, Bubba. Point me to some laughs, or even a goddamn chuckle in that book.
People frequently ask me if I believe in God, as if it were some kind of final judgment or naked indicator of my pro or con value in this world. Ho ho. This is too stupid to even think about -- like a WHITES ONLY sign on the pearly gates of Heaven.
But not really. Don't get me wrong, fellas. That is only a whooped-up "figure of speech" or maybe a failed metphor. It is a term of Art, not a term of Law. If the freak who wrote the Book of Revelation had been busted and jailed for the horrible threats he made against the whole human race, he would have been executed on the spot by a Military Tribunal. So long, Johnny, we never really liked you anyway. Mahalo. \ufffdQuien sabe? Perhaps the prospect of watching the reruns of the Rapturin Out folks, orchestrated by the nukular Prez .. was as toxic as that medical death sentence; I mean.. who among us can fathom the effects upon a writer, of the now certain prospect of Another Four Years of language murder by a smirking chimp (+ the bathos of hand-wringing Left Their Behinds folk) B-o-o-r-i-n-g perhaps unto death?
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Post #195,888
2/22/05 3:20:13 AM
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While I like HST's work...
...I think he has a uniquely American perspective. I find it difficult to relate to some of the cultural and sociopolitical mores that he describes, because I've only ever seen them on TV, read about them in a book, or seen them on the silver screen. This means that my enjoyment of a lot of his work is in a rather abstract sense, rather than engaging with the text, like I can with (say) Nick Hornby or even Iain Banks.
I think that the American all-or-nothing (at least, it seems that way; but then, empty vessels make the most noise, etc; I'm talking about what I can see and hear) approach to religion is something particularly alien. I suspect that it's this culture of hell-fire Baptist and primitive Methodist teaching that provoked his ire.
100% on-target on the rich folk, though. Rich is as rich does, be it over here or over there.
Peter
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Post #195,898
2/22/05 5:49:54 AM
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..think it's hard for *you*
I live here, and - most of the traditions have never made much sense, well.. after age ~12.
I guess I've wondered too, if he travels well - a lot of his hyperbole is coded in local labels, so I see what you mean. I think it's fair to call him a Muckraker in the mold of Mencken, but by whatever name, he clearly had the nose for the multiforms of hypocrisy; was the nemesis of the Murican fondness for euphemisms. Undoubtedly on every Tee Vee preacher's List.
That's enough for me to salute.
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Post #195,978
2/22/05 3:48:48 PM
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Hunter S. Thompson on Richard Nixon
The Rude Pundit was kind enough to link to this....
HE WAS A CROOK
by Hunter S. Thompson
[link|http://portland.indymedia.org/en/2002/12/36930.shtml|http://portland.indy...02/12/36930.shtml]
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Post #196,058
2/23/05 8:38:50 AM
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HST on GWB
To say this goofy child president is looking more and more like Richard Nixon in the summer of 1974 would be a flagrant insult to Nixon.
[link|http://www.hempfarm.org/Papers/Kingdom_of_Fear.html|Kingdom Of Fear]
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Post #196,422
2/26/05 1:37:08 PM
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Falling down an elevator shaft into a pool of mermaids.
[link|http://www.economist.com/people/displayStory.cfm?story_id=3690414|The Economist]: Assigned to cover the Kentucky Derby in 1970, his mind was too blown with drugs, as usual, to write the story. One by one, with his trembling hands, he ripped the pages of whiskey-fuelled ramblings out of his notebook and sent them to the printer. The piece that resulted, \ufffdThe Kentucky Derby is Decadent and Depraved\ufffd, was a runaway success, though he had neither described the race nor mentioned the winner. And he was astonished: it was like \ufffdfalling down an elevator shaft and landing in a pool of mermaids.\ufffd :-) Cheers, Scott.
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