Cognitive Dissonance

Well, it’s that time of year again. It has been an interesting year for HST fans, with a few books and a film, the TV thing on Starz, and work being done on the film The Rum Diary.

We all raise a glass….

Today July 18th is Hunter S. Thompson’s birthday. He would have been 71. Now everybody knows that Hunter liked to have a good time so lets just do that today and celebrate the man – he would have wanted to hear ice clinking in glasses and the sound of people having FUN! 

Totally Gonzo

I haven’t done a posting about Hunter in some time, so here is a clip from the Owl Farm Blog:

Today’s HST wisdom comes from The Gonzo Way: After Doug Brinkley’s introduction, the chapters go as follows:

Lesson 1.

 Learning – That’s What It’s All About.

Lesson 2:

It’s Wrong When It Stops Being Fun.

Lesson 3:

Politics Is The Art of Controlling Your  Environment.

Lesson 4:

We Is The Most Important Word in Politics.

Lesson 5:

 Truth Is Easier.

Lesson 6:

 Buy The Ticket, Take the Ride.

Lesson 7:

Never Apologize, Never Explain.

Owl Farm Blog: The 7 Lessons Of Hunter S. Thompson

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A young man in Seattle recently write to me:

The other day I was asked to do the now common act of taking off my shoes at the airport security screening. As I deposited my shoes in the tray, a sense of utter absurdity washed over me. I have to take my shoes off and have them scanned by an X-ray machine because some guy tried to blow up an airliner with his sneakers. And I thought, I feel like I’m in a world not even Kurt Vonnegut could have imagined. So now that I find I can ask you such questions, tell me, could you have imagined it? (We’re in real trouble if someone figures out how to make explosive pants.)

I wrote back:

The shoe thing at airports and Code Orange and so on are world-class practical jokes, all right. But my all-time favorite is one the holy, anti-war clown Abbie Hoffman (1945-1989) pulled of during the Vietnam War.  He announced that the new high was banana peels taken rectally. So then FBI scientists stuffed banana peels up their asses to find out if this was true or not. Or so we hoped.

Source: Daily Kos: Cheers and Jeers: Thursday

Dr. Hunter S. Thompson

Anita Thompson would like to invite you to please join from your own home the quiet bon fire she is having for her husband by lighting a fire or candle at 6pm Mountain Standard Time on February 20th and reading a HST passage. She will be doing the same at her Owl Farm home with family. Gonzostore.com will reopen in a few days.

I
He disappeared in the dead of winter:
The brooks were frozen, the airports almost deserted,
And snow disfigured the public statues;
The mercury sank in the mouth of the dying day.
What instruments we have agree
The day of his death was a dark cold day.

Far from his illness
The wolves ran on through the evergreen forests,
The peasant river was untempted by the fashionable quays;
By mourning tongues
The death of the poet was kept from his poems.

But for him it was his last afternoon as himself,
An afternoon of nurses and rumours;
The provinces of his body revolted,
The squares of his mind were empty,
Silence invaded the suburbs,
The current of his feeling failed; he became his admirers.

Now he is scattered among a hundred cities
And wholly given over to unfamiliar affections,
To find his happiness in another kind of wood
And be punished under a foreign code of conscience.
The words of a dead man
Are modified in the guts of the living.

But in the importance and noise of to-morrow
When the brokers are roaring like beasts on the floor of the Bourse,
And the poor have the sufferings to which they are fairly accustomed,
And each in the cell of himself is almost convinced of his freedom,
A few thousand will think of this day
As one thinks of a day when one did something slightly unusual.

What instruments we have agree
The day of his death was a dark cold day.

II
You were silly like us; your gift survived it all:
The parish of rich women, physical decay,
Yourself. Mad Ireland hurt you into poetry.
Now Ireland has her madness and her weather still,
For poetry makes nothing happen: it survives
In the valley of its making where executives
Would never want to tamper, flows on south
From ranches of isolation and the busy griefs,
Raw towns that we believe and die in; it survives,
A way of happening, a mouth.

III
Earth, receive an honoured guest:
William Yeats is laid to rest.
Let the Irish vessel lie
Emptied of its poetry.

In the nightmare of the dark
All the dogs of Europe bark,
And the living nations wait,
Each sequestered in its hate;

Intellectual disgrace
Stares from every human face,
And the seas of pity lie
Locked and frozen in each eye.

Follow, poet, follow right
To the bottom of the night,
With your unconstraining voice
Still persuade us to rejoice;

With the farming of a verse
Make a vineyard of the curse,
Sing of human unsuccess
In a rapture of distress;

In the deserts of the heart
Let the healing fountain start,
In the prison of his days
Teach the free man how to praise.

— In Memory of WB Yeats by WH Auden

Source: Dr. Hunter S. Thompson

 I read in an article recently that Anita would be releasing several more volumes of HST’s work, including Polo is My Life, which is a title that I have seen for quite a while on amazon, with no indication as to what it was. Apparently it is an unfinished novel of sorts.

I have just moved my home office from the basement of my house to a smaller room upstairs, which is actually a better arrangement. However, as part of this faustian deal, I am boxing up some of my more unused items an they are not making it to the new shelves. I do however hav a shelf dedicated to my two favorites, HST, and Douglas Adams. It rather sucks th see so much writing that I enjoy, and knowing that it is now a limited supply.

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MSN Search: polo is my life hunter thompson

Sometimes others seem to find the perfect words that I cannot.

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Modern Drunkard Magazine Online

I just found a sweet copy of HST’s Curse of Lono at Half Price Books for $100. Softcover, fantqastic condition. It’s so nice I’m afraid to read it.   But I will, of course.

I’m on a roll today. another great research link.

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Hunter S. Thompson – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

For those who are not up on current events, ESPN page 2 contains some of the last of Hunter S Thompson’s articles.

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ESPN.com – GEN – Hunter S. Thompson Archive