Friday, November 6, 2015

HST Will Set Me Free

OK dig.

I am reading Hunter S. Thompson. Haven't read his stuff in quite a while.

Feels like coming home.

Towards the end of his career/life he was writing a column for ESPN2. He began his career as a sports writer, why not end it so?

Just picked up a book titled "Hey Rube - Blood Sport, the Bush Doctrine, and the Downward Spiral of Dumbness".

It is a collection of the columns Hunter wrote for ESPN.

I have avoided this book up until now because I thought it would not satisfy my HST craving.

I was dead wrong. As I said it feels like coming home.

He had a style of writing that was combative, ballsy, funny, informed, enlightening and informative.

If I could pick one style to emulate, his would be it.

Of course if I did that I would be derivative. Unoriginal. And Hunter would come back from the grave, kick my ass from here to hell and back and tell me to write my own stuff or die trying.

An excerpt from a column titled: "The New Dumb":

"Autumn is always a time of Fear and Greed and Hoarding for the winter coming on. Debt collectors are active on old people and fleece the weak and helpless. They want to lay in enough cash to weather the known horrors of January and February. There is always a rash of kidnapping and abductions of schoolchildren in the football months. Preteens of both sexes are traditionally seized and grabbed off the streets by gangs of organized perverts who traditionally give them as Christmas gifts to each other to be personal sex slaves and playthings."

There are those of you who will take these words literally. Those who won't know what to do with them.

You might not laugh. You might call it gibberish.

If so I am guessing you fall into that large slice of the American population that has no sense of humor. And when I say sense of humor I am talking a finely tuned, subtly nuanced sense of humor. Not the black and white decidedly unfunny stuff that most people laugh at.

I'll give you an example.

We went out to breakfast recently on a Sunday morning with a group of society's rejects. Close friends of ours.

While standing around waiting for tables to be cleared, I turned to Jason (The Ring Leader) and said: "I predict THE PATS will beat the colts tonight 75 to 0."

A guy standing near us laughed. He said to me: "I'm pretty sure THE PATS will win the game but I don't think the score will be 75 to 0."

It was obvious to me in tone of voice and demeanor, that he was not joking.

That guy would never get Hunter S. Thompson.

People like that should be executed. They have no place on this planet.

Anyway I am re-united with HST and it feels like a breath of fresh air is blowing across my soul.

The timing is perfect.

My soul was beginning to look like a raisin.

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