Hunter S. Thompson - Rest In Peace (or whatever)

Bad news all you heathen swine!
The man who epitomised the seeming oxymorons of rational excess and insanity, the singular man who could legitimate fear and loathing as political expression, the man most adept at surfing The Absurd, the man who spanned four decades of radical conservatism with the most damning insight and criticism, the only man who could legitimate (in my eyes at least) the irresponsible handling of firearms! -
Ecce homo -
Hunter S. Thompson (no less) -
committed suicide just the other day.
or was it today? who cares!?
the 67 year old whose expansive ramblings, rantings and writings had the unmistakeable smacks of harmless untruths and harmful truths (which is more than we can so of most - if any) shot himself.
which is an entirely appropriate way out for one so way out.
Hunter,
god's mercy on you, you swine!

Urbane Warfare

Last night I went to see some local Launnie M.C.'s freestyle it.
They showed each other down.
As their alcohol contents' increased so did their skills strangely enough and it was great seeing some guys with skills having a good time in a creative way.
I don't see enough creativity.
I see plenty of consumption.
And though the frontin' and shuntin' with the lyrical frills to pay the bills ('You're no match for me, see homey!") can be a little lame, there's no denying a real ability and sometimes some really impressive performances.
And some funny ones.
Just a good time out really. And that wasn't going to happen in the nightclubs of Launceston.
Why do I always feel like a social anthropologist?
And it's true, I think, Dave:
'If I have exhausted the justifications I have reached bedrock and my spade is turned. Then I am inclined to say: "This is simply what I do."' L.W.
This covers everything!
Things often still strike me as odd, however. And that's really swell I think. I just don't usually share it.

It Rubs The Lotion On Its Body And Puts It In The Bucket

What do you say to yourself in the morning as you bleerily peer at your reflected face, scraping gel shit off with the little bits of hair?
I never remember.
I think the substance of my thoughts are elsewhere.
Perhaps there isn't any thinking going on.
Zen trance?
Sometimes I think about how I look or will look and how others will perceive me.
I don't think I care as much about my appearance as some but that's not to say that I don't care at all!
Of course I do.
Have you ever heard someone say: "I dress like this (or put make up on, etc) for me. I do it for me. It makes me feel good. I'm not doing it for anyone except me."
Bull shit!
Why bother at all, in that case?
No, we live for each other as much as for ourselves.
If you were the last person on Earth you would cease to be a person per se.
I make sense of myself as a 'person' in a community of other people and in relation to the whole place in which I find myself (the next question is 'what kind of person?').
I see myself in relation to the context in which I am.
Never the same.
I start out there and reverse engineer back to some sense of self when I feel the need to justify some action or state of being.
Thoroughly contingent.
I remember what I was saying to myself over and over again as I was performing my morning ablutions, staring into my eyes:
"Looking good, seeing clearer."
?

What goes round

I took a bus to Hobart this weekend just past.
Unfortunately, a young woman decided she wanted to sit next to me and talk.
I politely obliged for a while but I really wasn't in the mood and so I decided to try various different techniques to shuck her off.
Rude of me, to be sure.
First, I decided to talk too much about me and to blow my trumpet something furious.
Next, I started talking in a depressed way about how what I attempt never really works. I applied this principle to significant areas of my life (note the sudden contrast to the first method).
Next, I started talking about philosophy and Jewish mysticism in particular.
None of these three worked. She wasn't interested but she kept asking questions anyway.
I then asked her questions about her life in relation to these things but asked slightly inappropriate questions about them. Inappropriate, insofar as I read things into what she was saying that didn't really follow from what she had said (nothing rude).
This didn't seem to annoy her though.
The point is, I was trying to weird her out. And I was entirely unsuccessful.
Another thing is, she was slightly rude. Faintly critical, you could say, right from the start of the conversation.
I managed to piss her off finally with a discussion of my ex-quasi girlfriend's burning pubic hair on video.
After that she would not engage in conversation with me. At all. I wonder what she told her friends about the experience.
I do this sometimes: I was being an arsehole.
And so was she.
What goes round, goes round and round and round and...

There's A Party In Your Mouth And, Yeah, I Wanna Come

Sex is politics, n'est-ce pas?
Try this then.
I'm a (figuratively speaking) gonna skull fuck with extreme prejudice anyone who spouts the tired old adolescent platitudes of the evils of capitalism and the righteousness of Marx and various forms of anarchism, eco-ism etc.
Or the opposite we hear on tv and radio from the mono culture party megamarsupial LABORLIBERALIS AUSTRALOMYTHICO
Setting up dichotomies is rather moronic and lazy and it's time to hold on to real day to day values that make sense without obfuscating them with the trendy catch phrases one reads in the obligatory pissed off and intelligent loner, paranoid youth library of destruction and anti-establishment or the 'I only care about me' moral turpitude of the children of the eighties, nineties, 'noughties' and the so-called neo-liberal/new right (some of whom are recycled marxists [Jim Bacon may you rot in Hell!]).
Let's fuck things in new and interesting ways.

Challenging

There's something important about staying open to other ideas.
I mean actually, really encouraging and listening to other people's ideas as much as possible.
It's quite difficult.
And it places a kind of strain on me.
Not that I'd want to claim I'm very good at it.
It is strange, however, when in discussion (and this happens a lot) someone is trying to refute me when we are more or less saying the same thing!
Just in different ways.
It happens a lot.
Still, I welcome the challenge.
It's destabilising but not in a bad way.
It promotes change.
And I'm not the authority on anything anyway...
Got some 'situationist' stuff to look into now on top of my po/mo pastiche wank.

Reptilian Hot Buttons

Marketers, or The Persuaders as Douglas Rushkoff names them, seem a strange bunch.
I can't work out whether or not they believe their own marketing bullshit.
And they seem to live in a moral vacuum.
How's that for sweeping generalisations?!
One's I've seen on TV anyway...
Example:
Some lucrative French marketeer, called Coltaire Rapaille, thinks he's struck upon an original idea (and then quite possibly copywritten it, too) with what he calls 'Reptilian Hot Buttons'. Basically, this concept amounts to using hack Psychoanalytic word associations to trade on people's fears and desires - including young children, which is unethical (seriously, try getting the shit corporations are allowed to do to children past the ethics board at any University).
Still, nothing new in that - pushing people's buttons (but what's so reptilian about desires? They're not that underground or primordial, at all.).
In fact, isn't that what marketers are paid good money for anyway?
It's pretty blunt and obvious and that's why it works.
But the question is, what makes marketers think they are doing something important or revolutionary?
What makes them think their guiding principles are so bold and innovative?
Let alone their actual efforts?
And why 'Reptilian Hot Buttons'?
How about: Septillion Shit Flippers?
That's about the number and nature of marketeers.