The Only Daily That Comes Out Weekly
Issue #140
...is brought to you by...
The Only Daily That Comes Out Weekly
Issue #140
...is brought to you by...
 |
WWW Disinfotainment Today |
Fear and Loathing at the Funeral Parlor or The savage, brutal, ugly, treacherous, and cruel death of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson "Fiction is based on reality unless you're a fairy-tale
artist. You have to get your knowledge of life from somewhere. You have
to know the material you're writing about before you alter it."
The last thing I expected was to start out the day with a healthy cry, so allow me to wipe away the tears and expose my grief at the sudden loss of my idol Hunter S. Thompson. I don't use the word idol lightly. I idolized him like no other writer, and my brain can barely grasp the loss. I expected to be reading him forever, for Thompson to become an elder spokesman of a myriad of lost causes, and now that he's joined Hemingway in the pantheon of literary suicides, all I can do is mourn the loss of words to be. My joy in his life has now been paired with equal despair at his death. How the fuck could he do this to me? Yeah, I'm taking it personal. I never met the guy, but when someone who has absolutely everything you lack - fame, fortune, an enormous following, and an endless capacity to turn drug consumption into creative thought - and they deliberately take it away from themselves, they send the message that those items aren't enough to overcome the abject misery of existence. All of that couldn't ease his agony. What the hell does it take? I'm afraid I'm going to have to pick up where he left off and consume as many illegal drugs as possible and SURVIVE, just to prove it can be done. "I hate to advocate weird chemicals, alcohol,
violence or insanity to anyone but they've always worked for me."
This is all, of course, simply my way of dealing with the pain of an irreplaceable loss. There is no one on earth I wanted to emulate more than Hunter S. Thompson. Okay, maybe Warren Beatty, but that's my penis talking. Who doesn't dream of becoming a character in Doonesbury? My brain has always striven for the unbelievable wordplay of the Doc, and I recently, very publicly, adopted pieces of Hunter's style in a lame attempt to sound like him. Fat chance. "Every GOP administration since 1952 has let the
Military-Industrial Complex loot the Treasury and plunge the nation into
debt on the excuse of a wartime economic emergency. Richard Nixon comes
quickly to mind, along with Ronald Reagan and his ridiculous 'trickle-down'
theory of U.S. economic policy. If the Rich get Richer, the theory goes,
before long their pots will overflow and somehow 'trickle down' to the
poor, who would rather eat scraps off the Bush family plates than eat nothing
at all. Republicans have never approved of democracy, and they never will.
It goes back to pre-industrial America, when only white male property owners
could vote."
My influences are incredibly varied, a stew of styles appropriated from dozens of authors whose work delighted and opened me to new worlds of word combinations. Every journalist who has ever injected himself into his work, abandoning all hope of objectivity, creating an amalgam of incontrovertible facts with hilarious mind-games, owes an immeasurable heap of gratitude to the doctor for breaking down the fourth wall. He was the king of tangents and hyperbole, and Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas is simply one of the most entertaining, enlightening, hilarious, and damned important books ever written. The publication of it in Rolling Stone owed just as much to the open-mindedness of Jan Wenner as to the amazing talent of the author. Every professional journalist knows what it's like to be given a specific assignment, only to find in the process of discovery that there's a bigger story. Write that bigger story, hand it in, and you're sure to get the standard editorial slap on the wrist. "This isn't what I asked for" is a refrain I heard dozens of times from editors over the years, and more often than not, the piece would be reigned in to something more to the editor's liking. The editor who asked for a film review only to receive a flowchart, the editor who asked for a simple piece about a swap meet only to receive an indictment of the capitalist pigs on Melrose, they went ahead and printed what I wrote, and they are to me the supreme examples of what editors should be. "He may have died relatively young but he made
up for it in quality if not quantity of years. It was hard to say sometimes
whether he was being provocative for its own sake or if he was just being
drunk and stoned and irresponsible. But every editor that I know, myself
included, was willing to accept a certain prima donna journalism in the
demands he would make to cover a particular story. They were willing to
risk all of his irresponsible behavior in order to share his talent with
their readers."
I can think of no greater example than the magnificence of Jann Wenner, the editor of Rolling Stone, who asked Hunter S. Thompson to write about the Fourth Annual Mint 400 in Las Vegas, only to receive Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas in return. When you've assigned a writer a piece on a dirt bike race, the last thing on earth you expect back is something that starts "We were somewhere around Barstow on the edge of the desert when the drugs began to take hold." Thompson was the king of trying editor's patience. But Wenner went ahead and printed it, knowing full well it wasn't what he asked for. That took not only a healthy pair of knee-knockers but an admission that what was handed in far exceeded the assignment in scope and style. I know of whence I speak when I say that handing in something BETTER than what you were asked for is always a dangerous sport, and more often than not the editor will take your work and diminish it to his meager expectations, which is why I'm so much happier as my own editor, and why you get to suffer through run-on sentences that only exist through my endless capacity to allow myself such indulgences. Yep, I actually had editors say to me "I didn't ask for Hunter Thompson," and my invariable reply would be "Why are you complaining about an improvement?" I wasn't trying to BE Hunter Thompson any more than I'm trying to be Tom Robbins or H.L. Mencken or Michael O'Donoghue or dozens of other writers I've absorbed. I simply allow their talent to wash over me and to embrace whatever sticks - in a constant quest to be no one but myself. Everyone knows that the only way to be the best at what you do is to do something no one else is doing. The Doc and I already share a bit in common. His life was made into two feature films, my life was made into one cheesy MOW. He called himself a doctor. My initials are MD. His work consistently insisted that his personal life and idiosyncrasies were just as interesting as whatever story he was covering, and I admit to the same egocentricity. "We are living in dangerously weird times
now. Smart people just shrug and admit they're dazed and confused. The
only ones left with any confidence at all are the New Dumb. It is the beginning
of the end of our world as we knew it. Doom is the operative ethic."
So now we've got the autopsy to look forward to. As Paul Krassner pointed out to me, it would be the ultimate irony if, after years of illegal substance abuse, Thompson's depression turned out to have been caused by the use of some legal prescription drug like Zoloft. Let us at least acknowledge the word "apparent" that inevitably precedes the phrase "self-inflicted gunshot" in the coverage of Thompson's death. At this point, we don't know if he left a note. It's hard to imagine he wouldn't. Why would he leave us guessing? Was it a last minute, impulsive decision, or did he know years ago when he was typing an entire Hemingway novel into his typewriter that he was planning on following his idol's particular path into oblivion? They use the word "apparent," apparently to allow more for the possibility it was an accident than for the possibility he was "suicided" by an enemy, so let the conspiracy theories start now. Someone's got to say it. I can't allow myself to believe that Hunter S. Thompson shot himself any more than I believe Margie Schoedinger shot herself or Paul Wellstone's plane crash was an accident. Allow me to point out that his latest book was titled Hey Rube: Blood Sport, the Bush Doctrine, and The Downward Spiral of Dumbness, a savage indictment of the current administration, and that his next door neighbor was Prince Bandar, the Saudi ambassador and longtime Bush family friend featured in Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11. I find myself asking the two obvious questions: Would they have wanted him dead? Yep. Could they have made him dead? Yep. Case closed. I have no evidence to back my claim that a Bushie stooge put the gun in Hunter's hand, and no way to prove that I am simply deluding myself out of stunned disbelief. "A civilian gang of thieving lobbyists for the
military industrial complex is running the White House. If to be against
them is considered unpatriotic, hell, then call me a traitor."
He had back pain. I have back pain. That's no excuse. I can tell you right now that if I'm ever found dead of a self-inflicted gunshot wound, you can immediately start searching for the real killers because I'm sticking it through to the bitter end. No suicide for me. No thank you. There isn't a chance in hell I'd ever kill myself, other than through the exercise of a living will by the paroled Dr. Kevorkian to prevent extraordinary life-saving measures to be taken in the unlikely event I turn into a vegetable other than a couch potato. "In a nation ruled by swine, all pigs are upward-mobile
and the rest of us are fucked until we can put our acts together: not necessarily
to win, but mainly to keep from losing completely. We owe that to ourselves
and our crippled self-image as something better than a nation of panicked
sheep."
The one aspect of Thompson's writing and persona that I never understood or related to was his irritating and maniacal focus on guns and firepower, and that, of course, turned out to be his undoing. So Hunter, wherever you are, I'm taking up the cause minus the guns. I've never touched a handgun and never will. If I can't outshine you, at least I can outlast you. "Yeah, it is the end of the world. What, do you
think it's going to come on a TV show, right on schedule? Shit. They've
been digging this for a long time. Read the fucking Book of Revelations
The end of the world is not just coming; it's here. Until Bush came in
it was still possible to be successful, happy. That was two years ago,
but now the wheel is turning and I don't think what we're in now will possibly
get any better."
"Thy gift, thy tables, are within my brain
|
 |
|
|
Posted February 21, 2005
Today in History
Forget confession. Go here and wash your hands of everything you've done. The Real Reason Dare,
"Not long ago one sniper in a
Falluja building pinned down 150 Marines for a day. The Marines called
in two air strikes, 35 rounds of 155mm artillery and pumped hundreds of
rockets and 30,000 rounds of automatic fire from helicopters and ground
troops into the small building. A short time later the sniper killed another
Marine. They think they may have gotten that guy, now we only have a billion
more to go."
...which speaks
to me of what I believe is the real reason for the war in Iraq.
Calling All Screenwriters From InkTip Bonsai Entertainment
FOR TELEVISION:
Don't Take My Word For It "To pray is to pay attention
to something or someone other than oneself. Whenever a man so concentrates
his attention - on a landscape, a poem, a geometrical problem, an idol,
or the True God - that he completely forgets his own ego and desires, he
is praying. The primary task of the schoolteacher is to teach children,
in a secular context, the technique of prayer."
"A child-like man is not a man
whose development has been arrested; on the contrary, he is a man who has
given himself a chance of continuing to develop long after most adults
have muffled themselves in the cocoon of middle-aged habit and convention."
"So let us
regard this as settled: what is morally wrong can never be advantageous,
even when it enables you to make some gain that you believe to be to your
advantage. The mere act of believing that some wrongful course of action
constitutes an advantage is pernicious..."
"Find out just what people will
quietly submit to, and you have found out the exact measure of injustice
and wrong which will be imposed on them, and these will continue till they
are resisted with either words or blows. The limits of tyrants are prescribed
by the endurance of those whom they oppress."
"I learned
something new yesterday. Channel One News, the 'educational' TV show that
my daughter Isa and millions of other American kids watch every morning
at school, is busy recruiting our teenagers into the military.
"If
you're in the United States and reading this on the Internet, the Federal
Bureau of Information (FBI) may be spying on you at this very moment.
"Central Park was the first landscaped
public park in the United States. A dream refuge for the swarms of immigrants
seeking a better life, a bold experiment of its designers to lift the spirits
of every member of the great metropolis, no matter what the race or the
class, above the drudgery of urban life. But what it's really needed all
these years was a French couple sprucing it up with curtains."
"A subject
was told under hypnosis that when he was awakened he would be unable to
see a third man in the room who, it was suggested to him, would have become
invisible. All the 'proper' suggestions to make this 'true' were given,
such as 'you will NOT see so-and-so' etc... When the subject was awakened,
lo and behold! the suggestions did NOT work.
"Love is the triumph of imagination
over intelligence."
"I've learned that you cannot
make someone love you. But you can stalk them & hope they panic &
give in."
"I didn't see a thing."
"The warnings
provided by intelligence agencies to the FAA were far clearer and more
specific than suggested by Condoleezza Rice's testimony before the 9/11
commission when she reluctantly conceded the existence of a presidential
briefing that warned of impending Al Qaeda attacks. Rice had dismissed
those warnings as 'historical,' but according to the newly released section
of the 9/11 report, an astonishing 52 of the 105 daily intelligence briefings
received by the FAA and available to Rice before the Sept. 11 attacks made
specific reference to Al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden.
"More and more of our imports
come from overseas."
"The boundless
murders committed by the government of the United States under variously
false pretexts make the government of the United States and its armed forces
'Killers without Borders'. The group that I chose to use as an antonym
in describing the heinousness of the United States crimes worldwide is
'Doctors without Borders'. The reason I chose this group to serve as an
antonym in this essay is rather straightforward. That is, 'Doctors without
Borders' engage in benevolence with the sole purpose of saving lives irrespective
of national borders, while, the US policy makers and armed forces serve
as 'Killers without Borders' ready to murder innocent people without the
slightest regard to basic human decency, national sovereignty or official
borders.
"[H]ere is
the really funny thing about the personal/private
accounts debate. Not only are they not personal accounts, they're not
private accounts either. They are in fact U.S. government loans. (Bear
with me now, because this will only hurt for a moment.) You see, your payroll
taxes will still be used to cover the benefits of current retirees, but
under Bush's scheme the government will place a certain 'diverted' amount
into an account in your name. It sounds like a personal retirement account,
but it's not. It's a loan. Because if your account does really well (above
3 percent), when you retire the government will deduct the money it lent
you (plus 3 percent interest) from your monthly Social Security check leaving
you with almost the same amount you would have received under the current
system. If your account does really poorly (below 3 percent), you are out
of luck. According to Congressional Budget Office, the expected average
return will be 3.3 percent, so the net gain will be zero.
"Dogs in Australia's
Northern Territory are becoming addicted to a hallucinogenic cane toad
poison, according to local vets. Desperate for a canine high, dogs have
been seen licking the backs of cane toads for a poison secreted from glands.
Megan Pickering, a veterinarian in the town of Katherine, claims to have
seen many cases of dogs affected by the deadly toad poison. 'There seem
to be dogs that are licking the toxin to get high,' she told the local
newspaper. 'They lick the toads and only take in a small amount of the
poison, they get a smile on their face and look like they are going to
wander off into the sunset.'"
"I don't want any kid doing what
I tried to do 30 years ago. And I mean that. It doesn't matter if it's
LSD, cocaine, pot, any of those things, because if I answer one, then there
will be another one. And I just am not going to answer those questions.
And it may cost me the election."
"A gay
prostitute, a phonymedia
organization that managed
to sneak
its 'reporter'
into White House press briefings, and the lies
that were fed
to the media and the American people in the run-up
to war with Iraq what possible connection could these items have to
one another?
"The United States needs to lose
the war in Iraq as soon as possible. Even more urgently, the whole world
needs the United States to lose the war in Iraq. What is at stake now is
the way we run the world for the next generation or more, and really bad
things will happen if we get it wrong."
"You'd scarcely
know it from the mainstream media, but we're now the biggest debtor nation
in history, owing far more to foreign countries than they do to us, and
running up $500 billion more on our credit card every year.
"The
greatest crime against humanity in all historic time has now been committed
by the United States government. It dwarfs Joseph Stalin's killing of 7,000,000
Ukrainians in the 1930s and Adolph Hitler's killing of 6,000,000 Jewish
people in the 1940s. This crime will cause the premature deaths of TENS
of MILLIONS of people and will give a horribly debilitating disease to
TENS of MILLIONS more. It is indiscriminate mass murder - genocide. My
statements may be dramatic, but they are absolutely true.
"Is
it true that Social Security is in crisis? Is bankrupt? Is collapsing?
"The Christian ideal has not
been tried and found wanting. It has been found difficult and left untried."
"Art is either plagiarism or
revolution."
"A big Republican
donor goes to his governor and senator, saying he was told by President
Bush's chief fund-raiser he'd be getting a plum ambassadorial appointment
but it wasn't delivered. The senator takes his case right to the top of
the White House. Nothing happens for two years.
"The donor then helps stage a fund-raiser for Bush. A week later, the donor
lands an appointment as the chairman of the federal board overseeing billions
of dollars of student loans...
"The strongest
evidence yet that global warming has been triggered by human activity has
emerged from a major study of rising temperatures in the world's oceans.
"[W]hat's
so frightening is that we're seeing the beginnings of the first post-9/11
generation, the kids who first became aware of the news under an 'Americans
need to watch what they say' administration, the kids who've been told
that dissent is un-American and therefore justifiably punished by a fine,
imprisonment or the loss of your show on ABC.
"You'll all spend yourselves
into the poorhouse after I'm gone."
"Dad, you'll just have to work
harder."
"Since others have to tolerate
my weaknesses, it is only fair that I should tolerate theirs."
"Here in America we are descended
in blood and in spirit from revolutionists and rebels - men and women who
dare to dissent from accepted doctrine. As their heirs, we may never confuse
honest dissent with disloyal subversion."
"My theory of evolution is that
Darwin was adopted."
"Some of the biggest men in the
United States, in the field of commerce and manufacture, are afraid of
something. They know that there is a power somewhere so organized, so subtle,
so watchful, so interlocked, so complete, so pervasive, that they better
not speak above their breath when they speak in condemnation of it."
"It's a rare person who wants
to hear what he doesn't want to hear."
"The only disability in life
is a bad attitude."
"A successful marriage requires
falling in love many times, always with the same person."
"Heimert said
developers experimented with a host of possible ice-cream tributes to the
best-selling author, including Stupid White Chocolate,
Green
Tea Nation, and Dude, Where's My Coconut?
"The size
of the lie is a definite factor in causing it to be believed, because the
vast masses of a nation are, in the depths of their hearts, more easily
deceived than they are consciously and intentionally bad.
"America is a mistake, a giant
mistake."
"Why isn't
Bush looking for a way out of the greatest strategic blunder in American
history? Why, instead, is Bush and his government doing all they can to
spread the conflict into Syria and Iran?
"Everyone's life is an object
lesson to others."
"Life is a sexually transmitted
disease."
"The meek shall inherit the Earth,
but not its mineral rights."
"Journalists do not gather or
report information merely to satisfy their own curiosity or for their employer's
profit. They do so as surrogate stewards of the people's right to speak
and publish as they choose. The existence of a free press going about its
responsibilities unfettered by governmental intrusion is the practical
vindication of the individual's constitutional liberties."
"Don't waste time trying to persuade
people who believe that the earth was created in seven days. You're not
going to persuade those people of anything."
"I fell for
him the moment I saw him in person (his cartoons don’t really do him justice).
He was, as ever, nattily dressed with a lovely tie, freshly creased shorts
and jaunty cap atop his head. But it was his eyes that captivated me. And
the way his mouth curled up when he smiled. I knew that I was smitten.
"American
soldiers traumatized by fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan are to be offered
the drug ecstasy to help free them of flashbacks and recurring nightmares.
The US food and drug administration has given the go-ahead for the soldiers
to be included in an experiment to see if MDMA, the active ingredient in
ecstasy, can treat post-traumatic stress disorder.
"Calamities are of two kinds:
misfortunes to ourselves, and good fortune to others."
"If you must hate, if hatred
is the leaven of your life, which alone can give flavor, then hate what
should be hated: falsehood, violence, selfishness."
"It has taken me all my life
to understand it is not necessary to understand everything."
"One is tempted to define man as a rational animal who always loses his temper when he is called upon to act in accordance with the dictates of reason." - Oscar Wilde: The Critic as Artist - "To be a hero or a heroine, one
must give an order to oneself."
"To love with the spirit is to
pity, and he who pities most loves most."
"Give a man a fish and you feed
him for a day. Teach him to use the internet and he won't bother you for
weeks."
"Patience has its limits. Take
it too far, and it's cowardice."
"Merely corroborative detail,
intended to give artistic verisimilitude to an otherwise bald and unconvincing
narrative."
Everything Else Go here to figure out exactly how much Bush's Social Security plan is going to cost you. Mark Fiore's Torture Time is a lovely ad for our new improved foreign policy. If you roll your own cigarettes, the choices here will boggle your mind. Go to Zipdecode, type in your zipcode, and watch what happens. The beta version of Google Maps has an interface that's already better than Mapquest or Yahoomaps. I can't believe you haven't
already read my
adventures on a porn set.
|
Last Disinfotainment Today,
Issue
#139, was much better than this one,
and so is Issue
#141.
Random Issue of Disinfotainment
Today
Link to Disinfotainment Today with one of these tasteful banners.
Don't Let
This Happen to You.
Subscribe. |
|
| WARNING TO THOSE ON AOL
This column is sent out in HTML format which can only be seen with AOL 6.0 or better, so upgrade or go to hell. Powered by groups.yahoo.com |
|
Contact George W. Bush
- president@whitehouse.gov
Contact the Freemasons
- president@whitehouse.gov
Contact Skull and Bones
- president@whitehouse.gov
Contact the Carlyle Group
- president@whitehouse.gov
Contact the Illuminati
- president@whitehouse.gov
Contact
Satan - president@whitehouse.gov
Contact both houses of
Congress - president@whitehouse.gov
Contact the Supreme Court
- president@whitehouse.gov
Contact Dick Cheney -
vice.president@whitehouse.gov
Contact Halliburton -
vice.president@whitehouse.gov
Contact Bechtel -
vice.president@whitehouse.gov
Contact Saddam Hussein
- vice.president@whitehouse.gov
Contact Osama bin Laden
-
thetwins@whitehouse.gov
Contact Jeb Bush - jeb.bush@myflorida.com
Contact Fidel Castro
- jeb.bush@myflorida.com
Contact Kim Jong Il -
eng-info@kcna.co.jp
Contact Jacques Chirac
- france-presse@un.int
Contact the Pope - accreditamenti@pressva.va
Contact God - president@whitehouse.gov
Am I supposed to believe
you don't drink coffee?
You need a Disinfotainment
Today mug.
Boo hoo
How can I write like
Hunter S. Thompson if I can't afford any acid?
Won't
you donate to my drug cache?
or
Buy
my novel
Read
the first chapter
"It's a charming story, very
funny and I hope he writes a lot more.
- Lynette Sheffield -
Acknowledgment
dIsInFoTaInMeNt ToDaY consists of information from dozens of sources, cut up, thrown in the air, and recycled randomly. It is sent all over the place, so I apologize if you're seeing the same thing twice. If you see a joke, graphic, or news item that came from or through you, thanks, send more, and please accept the fact that much of dIsInFoTaInMeNt ToDaY is unacknowledgeable, and if I sought permission from everyone whose bastardized material showed up here, I'd never get anything else done. Please note that I don't even put my own name on it. If you're still pissed off, hey, it's fair use.
Thanks,
Les Filling
Your Very Special Gif for Making it to the Bottom of the Page
