Didn't Your Mother Teach You Not To Draw In Books?

I did it. I actually did it. I drew in a book. I think it might be the first time I've ever marked in a book, that I can remember. I even dog-eared textbooks in college with hesitation.

See, my mom has volunteered for the local Pacific Palisades library for about as long as I could read, helping run the used book sales since I was probably in middle school. I joined in as the muscle, moving boxes until college. I've always loved books. My parents saw to that, reading me Goodnight Moon from the getgo. I did the Summer reading programs and competed with my best friend to read the most. Besides records, books took up the most boxes when I moved to Arizona.

Books, both the content and the physical things, might mean more to me than records. Words were so important to me growing up as an intellectual overachiever. I kept the vocabulary pages from Reader's Digest. My mom and I would listen to vocabulary tapes in the car all the time. I love Poe the most, if that means anything.

So I had the idea to pay tribute to authors the way I pay tribute to musicians. But it meant defacing books! Well, I finally got up the gumption to try it. Of course it had to be Hunter, my wife's and Jason's favorite author. I knew it was time when we watched the Gonzo documentary and in it I saw the photograph I drew inspiration from for this piece.

I call it Liter(art)ure. Well, my wife did. I like the name. So I'm using it. I drew this portrait in "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas" on the page with the famous passage about the wave. It's still readable, along with the rest of the book. I did the drawing using the technique I'd learned way back in high school, with the same pen in fact. My old rapidograph still worked, amazingly.


So amazingly, I might do more.

Peace.

Where Are You, Hunter?

It's a fucking joke. "Candle in the Wind", Christ. What a twisted fuck, mocking his own death before it happens.

Better image would be the explosion of a bullet from one of his myriad of guns stretched out over the span of his years. Or the flames pissing out of a lighter fluid bottle over the distance.

Where are you, Hunter? Not you the man, the ashes smoldering around Owl Farm, but YOU, the raw, the angst-ridden, the truth, the savior of these United States of America. In earnest, YOU are ME, are WE. YOU are down there, buried below ever piling loads of shit; glossy, plasticy propanganda puked out in sound bytes and article subtitles and podcasts, whatever the fuck those are. Where are YOU!!!! WE need to dig YOU out, free YOU from Vegas, explode YOU out of a peyote button to burn down this farce.

This farce of transparency, of authenticity, of total access, of behind-the-scenes, of reality. YOU ARE ME!!! WE are Hunter. WE have to be! WE have to, individually and as the unholy mob, dig out of this shit. Media today should be US, not them, not the Fourth Estate. WE still mindlessly drone on, regurgitating their puked up tripe. Vietnam and Cambodia? Look at Afghanistan and Iraq. Fuck.

Hunter the man did indeed give up, give out. But maybe his self-martyrdom could actually serve the Hunter in US, forcing US to find him, to save him. So HE can save US! There's your fucking authentic giving. Selfless patriotism, not blind peevish sheepery. Serve truth, not people. Give to the Constitution, not the asses and elephants.

Maybe I'm not looking hard enough. Maybe it's MY fault. Of course it's MY fault. I am everybody, I AM HUNTER!!!!!

Where am I? Who the fuck are YOU?

Peace.

Politics Is The Art Of Controlling Your Environment

"That is one of the key things I learned in these years, and I learned it the hard way. Anybody who thinks that "it doesn't matter who's President" has never been Drafted and sent off to fight and die in a vicious, stupid War on the other side of the World -- or been beaten and gassed by Police for trespassing on public property -- or been hounded by the IRS for purely political reasons -- or locked up in the Cook County Jail with a broken nose and no phone access and twelve perverts wanting to stomp your ass in the shower. That is when it matters who is President or Governor or Police Chief. That is when you will wish you had voted."

-- HST (Jason's and my wife's favorite author)

Here's to your birthday, sweetheart!