A Ritual Purification (of sorts)

I was having a conversation with someone I support at work last Friday, similar to one I had with my boss as well, about how learning to deal with adversity at work is a necessity.  In this particular case, the issue is a difficult personal dynamic between two individuals.  Some leaders deal with these kinds of situations by removing the dynamic (i.e. basically removing one of the people in question from the situation).  I do think this is a mistake.

Why?  The White Album.  Rumors.  Just to name two.

In case you don't get the reference, these are two classic albums that share something in common, namely a tremendous amout of stress during their creations.  I can cite other examples, all of which would make any and all think that I have far too much time on my hands, but the point is made:  A certain amount of tension can help produce great results.

It's not just that tension and stress can sometimes bring about great results, it's also that a certain amount of this stuff simply makes us better, provided that allow ourselves to learn from the experience.  I can think of a few examples in my own professional life where I worked for folks who were just very difficult (at least for me).  I still somewhat cringe at some of these memories, but I know for an absolute fact that I also learned a lot from these folks.  As they say about making hotdogs, the process wasn't all that pretty, but I'm more or less happy with the result. 

Getting back to the first paragraph, I concede that we can't force people to work together...well we can certainly try, but it may end up being counter-productive (think squeezing jello:  Sometimes the harder you squeeze, the more you lose between your fingers).  The better way is to try and get folks to simply try to work through their difficulties.  We don't have to like everyone we encounter, but I do think it's important to always assume positive intent(1), especially in those where our natural instinct may be to assume the exact opposite.  Even if someone is, in reality, a serial dirtbag of a human being, sometimes a little "forced consciousness expansion"(2) can be a good thing.  This is, of course, tempered in the reality that nothing lasts forever anyway.

* * * * * *

On a related note, maybe I'm channeling more of myself that I realize in the above posting.  The underlying reality has been that up until about 90 days ago, I struggled professionally.  My new job, what happened about 90 days ago, is going well.  Before then?  Less so. Dramatically less so.  In fact, I'd say that the period of July 2018 to July 2019 was the worst time in all of my professional life.  There's almost something ironic about that statement, in part because during this period I had a terrific boss (who I would gladly work for again) and wonderful fellow team-mates.  Everything else?  Well let's just say I wasn't a good fit for the organization, and the organization wasn't a good fit for me.  If ever there was an employer-employee mismatch, well, it was then.

Looking back over this above referenced period, I can't yet see how that tension has helped me grow.  What I see instead is a kind of scar, covering up damage where I began to question my professional value and the choice I've made over the years.  Maybe that's the point though:  Sometimes the sole purpose of a difficult experience is to simply prepare us for something else...something better...maybe a ritual purification(3) of sorts.

* * * * * *

(1) Actually learned by me, for the most part, from someone who was very difficult to work with many years ago.

(2) Hunter S. Thompson:  

“No sympathy for the devil; keep that in mind. Buy the ticket, take the ride...and if it occasionally gets a little heavier than what you had in mind, well...maybe chalk it up to forced consciousness expansion: Tune in, freak out, get beaten.”

(3) Reference HERE.

The Un-stretched Rubber Band

In the back of my head, well, I knew this day was coming.  For the record, I even tried to prepare for it, but we all know how that old saying about "... best-laid plans..." goes.  "This day" and "it" refers to how I feel after having finished school related stuff(1).  The best way I can describe it is via a rubber band:

You stretch it and stretch it and stretch it.  Miraculously, it doesn't break.  But you do eventually let go of it, and what's left, after it snaps back, is a mere shadow of the formerly stretched self, formless and misshapen.  

That's where I'm at right here and now.

As a side note, I almost constantly...without exaggeration...have a song playing in my head.  As I was thinking about this topic during the quiet hours of this morning, the following song lyric came to mind:

"And if anything, 
then there's your sign of the times

I was alive and waited, waited
I was alive and waited for this,
Right here, right now"(2)

Sign of the times indeed.

Call it a funk.  Call it a rut.  This has happened to me before.  And will likely happen again.

There isn't much of a solution here.  No "chemical willy"(3) would be of help; besides, I'm simply adamant about the fact that, when all is said and done, I never want anything (including pharmacology) to come between me and my ability to truly experience life...the good, the bad, and the over-stretched rubber-band.  That could be either a truly enlightened concept on my part or incredibly stupid.  Both are likely to be correct.

Now I could find some other big thing to do.  And maybe that will happen.  But at the moment, "right here and now" I just don't have the mental juice for that sort of thing.  In as much as I feel as if I should be doing something big, part of me also knows that I need to rest, both mentally and physically.  The latter, by the way, has always been something of a challenge; as evidence, I can point to my having woken up at 5am this morning.  On a Saturday.

So what's left?  Maybe make a list of things I want to get done over the next few months.  Working outside is always sort of enjoyable for me.  As someone who has worked in the business world for three decades, complete with its tendency towards tremendous effort being put into things where there is no tangible outcome, something like cutting the grass has a significant benefit:  Before the work, the grass is high, after the work the grass is low.  

If only it were that easy in our professional lives.

(1) See THIS posting, among others.
(2) Jesus Jones, "Right Here Right Now"
(3) A phrase used by the late Hunter S. Thompson somewhere in The Great Shark Hunt.

January 5th, 1 Year Later

I told myself that I wouldn't be one of "those people" who seem to perpetually be in mourning.  I'm hoping to keep that promise, if for no other reason than the fact that I don't think I've really gotten to the actual "mourning" stage.  Yet.  Maybe not ever.  I refer to my younger brother Chris.

I will say, at the risk of sounding really weird(1), I've actually sort of experienced him in a few dreams over the past year. Granted, my dreams(2) play out like something out of a bad Dr. Hunter S. Thompson ether-binge lubricated acid trip.  Seriously, they really do, but with my brother Chris sometimes playing a kind of supporting role.  These dreams are never, as I can recall, about him by the way; he just sort of appears in them.  I'm told that there is a deeper meaning to these events, but I've yet to actually figure out that part.  Again, maybe not ever.

As a side note, I don't ever recall ever having a dream in past where one of my brothers was a participant.  It's a heck of a way to get a part in some surreal show playing in my slumber-bound subconsciousness.

Anyway, and to the point, it was a year ago on January 5th that I found my brother in his home.  We don't know the actual date he passed, other than it had likely been a day or three beforehand.  The fact that his home was a balmy 20 or so degrees when I found him complicated matters in that regard.  What I do know, and what I've noted before, is that while no one wants to be the one who actually finds a deceased family member, I continue to be grateful that it was me, and not one of my other brothers, Chris' wife, his daughter or really anyone else.  Chris, I think, always appreciated that I seemed to have my "stuff" together(3), so maybe this was some kind of karmic duty I was performing.

So what to make of this?  I don't really know.  For me, the process of unpacking emotional baggage is a long one, filled with procrastination. Part of me simply doesn't want to unpack this emotional baggage, in part because it's very, very difficult.  While I'm not one to back down from something simply because it's hard, I'm also not one for intentionally sticking a figurative icepick in my brain either.  "Hard", it seems, is a relative term.  Maybe, and more honestly, I'm still having difficulty processing the fact that I lost my brother, someone I genuinely was counting on to be there when we got older...someone who, as I've noted before...would be able to help me understand our common upbringing, hopefully working to make sense of stuff that, as kids, we really were not equipped to understand.

For the record, I'm not sure about an afterlife, but if there is one, he'll be there waiting for me one day (long into the future, if I have anything to say about it), smiling, ready with a midget joke.

(Not quite the Corleone Brothers...Chris, Joe, Steve & Rich)

My brother was very fond of The Doors, so in my best Casey Kasem imitation, "here is the long-distance dedication".

(1) But let's face it:  If you read this stuff long enough, you've already come to the conclusion that I really am weird anyway.  I'm okay with that, for the official record.
(2) Maybe like others?  I don't know...as I only experience my own anyway.
(3) Mostly theatrics, I will note.

Artifacts

As we get older, I think many of us accumulate artifacts.  Now outside of those poor, unfortunate hoarders you see of television, for most of us the artifacts we have aren't all that many.  For me, I have a fair number of things, but I'd only consider a small number to be actual artifacts.  And here they are.


Well worm statue of the Virgin Mary
The Story:  I found this in the attic a few years (and places) ago, as I was going through an exceptionally painful period in my life.  She was kind of beat up, but still beautiful.  It looked like she needed a home, and I figured that since I do ask for an intercession from time to time, it might make sense to keep her with me.  She's now on her third home with me, and this time no further moves are contemplated.  As long as I am here working in my office she will be about 2 feet away, watching over things.

Idolatry?  Nahh, more like a simple reminder.

Penn State Brick
The Story:  This brick was part of a fundraising effort that the Penn State Harrisburg Alumni Society undertook back in the 90's.  The idea of sell the bricks...which came from a student housing development that was being demolished...was mine.  I loved my experience at Penn State Harrisburg, and the brick is the perfect reminder of that time.


Notebooks
The Story:  I have kept a few notebooks I've written in over the years.  Even in those pre-Internet years I was always writing about something, mostly in pen.  I also have one or two saved school notebooks.  The one below is actually from my senior year of high school, back when I actually knew how to write in cursive script.

Framed "art" from my daughters
The Story:  I've had this for a long time and every time I look at it I smile.  I know I haven't been a perfect dad, but I think I've been a good dad.  And I've certainly tried.  If success at parenting is measured in part by the success of children, then I must be doing okay, for my daughters all make me so very proud.


Piglet figure
The Story:  I have this at my work office.  It is a reminder of my daughters were younger and just like piglet...namely small and pink.


Dr Hunter S. Thompson Quote
The Story:  Framed, hanging on my home office wall, reading as follows:  "Every now and then when your life gets complicated and the weasels start closing in, the only cure is to load op on heinous chemicals and then drive like a bastard from Hollywood to Las Vegas...with the music at top volume and at least a pint of ether.".  I made this myself, complete with lamination.  Again, this goes back to a very difficult time in my life, and while I've never tried any illicit drugs (although I did have ether once, when I was 5 and had my burst appendix removed), I really like this quote because it is a reminder that when things get tough, the worst thing you can do is to just sit on your butt and feel bad for yourself or your situation.

Scranton School Board - Yes, it's that bad.

Robert (Bob) Sheridan is a sitting Scranton School Board Director and, as noted in the Friday (May 17th) edition of the Scranton Times, has no problem accepting political campaign donations from vendors who provide services to the district.

Now according to a policy which makes sense pretty much nowhere OTHER THAN on the Scranton School Board, sitting directors CAN receive donations from district vendors.  Yes, they can.  How, then, would conflicts of interest, such as "quid-pro-quo" situations, be prevented?  They won't, which is precisely the problem.  The only thing preventing "pay to play" in the Scranton School District is the honor and integrity of the district's directors.

Wait, excuse me for a moment.

I'm back.  Sorry, I just laughed myself into a 20 minute coma after writing that sentence about "honor and integrity".

Yes, for real, taxpayers basically have to reply on school board directors to be honest and act in the best interest of children, not outside business interests.  Said Mr Sheridan in the above referenced article, "I work for the better education of our kids".  To which I say the following:

Prove It.

Director Sheridan offers no proof that political contributions from district vendors haven't influenced his votes because this is inherently something that can't be proven or disproved with any degree of certainty.  It's a perfect place for the politician to reside, namely that murky space where money flows and attached strings are basically invisible to all but the donor and the recipient.  In a situations like this, I'm reminded of the following Hunter S. Thompson quote:

"In a nation ruled by swine, all pigs are upward mobile — and the rest of us are f&^%d until we can put our acts together: Not necessarily to Win, but mainly to keep from Losing Completely"

I don't know if Thompson had ever heard of Scranton, but his comment fits the nature of NEPA politics very well.

Now I've waxed philosophical about this for long enough, so now it's time for what we call at work "the ask":

Dear Director Sheridan, 

I am formally asking you to return all district vendor political campaign contributions you have received this election cycle and refuse to take any in the future.  Accepting these contributions creates an impression of corruption and impropriety that simply doesn't have to exist.  Now I get the logic, namely that sitting directors are at a disadvantage by not being able to receive vendor contributions, but so what!  It's a reasonable trade-off to eliminate another avenue for graft.  Let's also not forget that sitting directors have several advantages over challengers in that they get to plaster their names and words all over district communications and get lots of free television air-time via cable public access channels. 

Please prove that you truly do work for the betterment of education by eliminating what is nothing more than a blatant avenue for impropriety.

Best Regards, 
Steve Albert
Resident & taxpayer

Director Sheridan is free to contact me via the blog and I'll gladly post his reply in this space, unedited and word for word.

I'll be waiting.

Probably for a long time.

Gore Vidal

As has been reported widely, writer Gore Vidal passed away recently.  Link HERE.  I'll confess that I've never read any of Mr Vidal's books, and while I know him by reputation (and by virtue of the fact that William F. Buckley once called him "queer"), I can't say that I was drawn to his work.  I do, however, respect the fact that many have been touched by his writing.  You can link to an example of what I mean HERE.

The passing of Mr Vidal does remind me just how much we can be impacted by the written word.  As Gort mentioned in his posting (the link, above), I too, at about the same age, had some neurons reconfigured via reading a great book.  In my case it was The Great Shark Hunt by Hunter S. Thompson.  As I've noted here before, it was the first book I think I've ever read cover to cover that intellectually grabbed me and made me think about "things".  The specific lessons about politics...and the absurdity of politics...aside, the book also was the first time when I actually felt okay to be, well, somewhat strange.  It was as if there was a subtext to the book that said "it's okay to be a weirdo".  Later in life I would learn that we are ALL a little strange, in our own beautiful ways.  To this very day I still treasure the time when I first read The Great Shark Hunt.

As a side note, I was not really broken to pieces when Thompson committed suicide.  In fact I was more relieved than anything else, as I had read where the last year or so of his life was lived in quite a bit of physical pain.  While I'm not advocating for suicide here (as someone who has had member of his family make such attempts I know all too well how painful that can be), there is something graceful in a person who consciously makes the ultimate decision to take charge of their life.

The moral of this all?  I think that there is tremendous power in the written word.  We need to cultivate great thinking via great written works so that others have the same opportunity to learn and grow that we have enjoyed in our lives.  To the extent we have a culture it is reflected in the works of people like Gore Vidal and Hunter S. Thompson.  What a great legacy.

Road Apples, #109

Earthquake...Kind of ironic that this was centered near Washington D.C., hay'na or no?  (By the way, did I use "hay'na" correctly?).  Anyway, I was working on staff mid-year performance appraisals when it all went down and I didn't feel a blessed thing.  People on the second and third floors of my building (including my oldest daughter) did feel it, so best guess that was that since I was sitting on a concrete slab I didn't but those sitting on open-web steel joists did.  Oh well.  In other news, apparently people in California...land of fruits and nuts...are mocking the earthquake response here in the east.  Big deal.  Let's see Los Angeles handle 6 inches of snow.

Family Genetics & Maine...As was documented ad nauseum here, I spent a week vacationing in Maine.  Loved it...and if you like the outdoors at all you should really consider going there once in your life.  Anyway, it seems that my cousin Jeanine also loves Maine, which makes me wonder if there is some kind of genetic thing going on.  Anyway, I really do recommend vacationing there, although it's not exactly a great place if you like swimming in the ocean.

WILK...I see & hear where WILK is thumping Lou Barletta (the man who has the whitest teeth I have ever seen on another human being) on a regular basis these days, as reported HERE among other places.  Now for the record I was pretty harsh in my criticism of Paul Kanjorski over the years, so no one can successfully label me as a shill for the Democrats.  However this is a self-inflicted wound for Barletta.  If you are going to be critical of the former incumbent for not having town hall meetings, then damn straight you had better have lots of them...and even more importantly...don't talk about how you can't have them because of disruptive constituents (or "nuts with cameras", as Kanjorski used to say).  Here's one other thing about Barletta that I want to get off my chest:  he can stop already with the canned, GOP-fed word for word talking points.  Barletta seems like a personable guy, so maybe he should leverage his people skills just a bit more by being himself.  Talk to people in the public domain.  Skip the scripts.  Doing stuff like having a closed door meeting at the uber-WASPY Westmoreland Club doesn't exactly inspire confidence.  Having the ability to handle critics well in the public domain can be a pretty positive thing.  Seeming to duck critics can be the opposite.  Man-up Lou.

NEPArtisan...I have an open invitation to continue posting at NEPArtisan, so I'm thinking I should actually write something one of these days.  It's so hard though for me to get excited about political stuff these days.  I normally find politics to be ever so slimy, and in this current political climate that normal layer of viscous sludge is growing even more repugnant.  What's more, I think they are all mostly self-serving bums in Congress anyway.  Excuses, excuses.

Movies...Movies that are coming out that I am interested in seeing include Apollo 18 and The Rum Diary. The former is your standard Sci-Fi horror thing, and the latter is a movie version of an early Hunter S. Thompson novel.  I never real this particular HST piece by the way, so it should be interesting.

S-WB Yankees...Apparently a local group of investors has come forth with an offer to buy the management rights of the S-WB Yankees.  Good thought, but probably isn't going to work, as I believe that there already is legal stuff in place to transition the ownership to the Yankees organization.

Sports...Finbar O'Brien has a great post on college football that you can link to HERE.  It's one of those things that I read and immediately wished I had written it.

School Starts....today for a number of local districts.  Here's to a safe and productive new year of learning for all the kids out there.  The first day of school was always this kind of magical time for me when I was a kid, and while I am now years past such things I can still recall that feeling of wonder/awe/anticipation.  

On the Road

Taking a break from business of blogging and heading out on the road.

Here's to avoiding the bats.

Beware of Bloggers on Angst

I wrote the other day about all the stuff I've been writing furiously over the past two months.  How bad was this?  It was a daily ritual.  I'd feel some level of angst over something...it didn't matter how big or small...it didn't matter what it was...and I'd instinctively reach for the keyboard.  The next step was to pound out whatever was in my head in an almost Hunter Thompson-esque mescaline & ether fueled rage.  It would literally fly from my toxic neurons to my fingertips, as if there was some kind of sewer line connecting the two.  Some of it went into private blogs, some of it went into documents that I would type, print and save in my special "angst" folder, ever at the ready.  None of it was ever used for anything.  All of it was so very, very dysfunctional.  It was all so very raw.


Almost all of it has been deleted, shredded or discarded.  "Almost" because in looking at the sum of it over the past few days, there were bits and pieces that made some sense.  That's been saved.  The rest of it ended up becoming destroyed bits/bytes or little scraps of paper in an anonymous garbage can I found in my travels.  Anyone emptying the trash in this undisclosed location...provided that they had the interest & some scotch tape...would be in for some interesting reading.  Luckily my name isn't on any of it.


Am I ashamed of this behavior?  Not really.  I sure as sin would not be writing about it now if I were, that's for sure.  


No, there is a lesson in this for me, and probably others also predisposed to angst-fueled writing jags.  The lesson?  Writing "it" down can be a form of therapy, but it can also be an exercise in illusion.  I wasn't writing to understand my feelings; I was using to try and somehow empty them.  That was the illusion:  they are still here.  Writing furiously simply made me feel worse, not better.


I still write about stuff that I'm feeling, good or bad.  But it's more measured now.  I don't react and write.  I think and write.  More important than that?  I understand that feelings are to be felt, not emptied onto a page and somehow wished into oblivion.    

Advice for Difficult Times

As I struggle through some difficult times, I am reminded of the advice provided by the late, great Dr. Hunter S. Thompson:

 

“Every now and then when your life gets complicated and the weasels start closing in, the only cure is to load up on heinous chemicals and then drive like a bastard from Hollywood to Las Vegas ... with the music at top volume and at least a pint of ether."

 

 

 

Now to get my hands on some ether.

Road Apples, #65

Perfect Day...at it has been weather-wise. Not too hot, not too cold, and great light for taking pictures. I posted a few I took walking around Lake Scranton, including two of a fox (or maybe it was a coyote?) that I saw from about 100 feet away. In walking around the lake for years this is the first time I've seen a fox; at first I thought maybe he/she was rabid (since you normally don't see them), but the fact that it ran into the wood shortly after getting wind of me made me think that it was probably okay. Man, the crows were so loud around it...maybe they had nests that they felt were threatened. You can see the pictures on my Facebook profile.

On the Health Front...I continue to slowly recover from my nasty case of strep throat. Man, that one was tough; it was basically non-stop sore throat, and in hindsight I wonder I was able to adequately function. In the "things we should all be thankful for" department, I'm glad that we have modern medicine that can cure such things.

My Oldest Daughter Katrina...continues to somewhat struggle in Egypt. The good news is that she is coming home on Thursday, when I pick her up in Philadelphia. It will be good to have her home for a bit, that is until she heads back to Kutztown for the summer. Even if she disagrees I do think this has been a great experience for her. You can read all you want about what it means to live in a developing nation, but until you see the animals in the street and the kids begging for money it's all just words on a page. Also in the "things we should all be thankful for" department we need to remember just how great it is to live in this country.

In the "Gift for Me" Department...I bought the second edition of the Bloom County complete library on Saturday. I truly miss Bloom County. As I've mentioned here on a few occasions, Bloom County was sheer genius; I'd compare it in part to the work of people like Hunter S. Thompson and Warren Zevon. I know, it sounds a bit strange to compare a comic strip to a gonzo journalist and off-center rock icon, but that's how I see it. All three had this twisted sort of view on the universe, and all three routinely made me both laugh and think. Now to find a decent Bill the Cat tee shirt...

Firefox...Normally I am a ginormous (an actual word, by the way) fan of Firefox, but lately it's been crashing on me quite a bit. Twice today as a matter of fact, both times when dealing with images. Are the Internet gods trying to steer me towards Chrome? I already use that for some light browsing, so maybe I should consider using it as my main browser. For the record, it's my personal opinion that anyone who regularly uses Internet Explorer has rocks in his/her head.

Walmart...Is it me or is there a tattoo requirement for Walmart cashiers? Maybe it's like a prison kind of thing, you know like baggy pants.

Another Book To Read

All of Gort & NEPArtisan's references to Hunter S. Thompson compelled me to order this book as I was getting something for my oldest daughter's upcoming trip to Egypt. Since I've given up on trying to finish Artie Lange's "Too Fat To Fish" this will be the next in line, once it arrives.

The Wisdom of Hunter S. Thompson, Part II

A few weeks ago I posted a few of my favorite quotes from Dr. Hunter S. Thompson (link HERE), and of late I've learned that a few of the other local bloggers are fans.  Reading references to the late "Dr Gonzo" made me think about when...and why...I started to read Thompson's work.

My first experience with HST was at Bishop Hannan High School.  I'm not sure of the year, but it was probably around 1979ish.  One or two of the more influential kids in my class, "influential" being a relative term among teenage boys, were talking about this book "The Great Shark Hunt", which intrigued me enough to get a copy (my edition looked something like THIS).  I was hooked from page one.  Being a nerdy kind of guy, I was already familiar enough with Richard Nixon, George McGovern and the rest, so it wasn't as if I was learning anything new.  In fact some of the subject matter itself, such as the Kentucky Derby, didn't interest me at all.  Instead of information, it was really just the style of HST's writing that grabbed me.  When Thompson writes, it's almost as if he's talking to you.  He is this wacky uncle that is telling you a bizarre story:  you just don't see his words, you hear his thoughts.  It's a subtle kind of thing I suppose, and maybe I'm reading too much into it all, but even in later works such as his ESPN column (Hey Rube) I felt exactly the same way.

Drugs.

The drugs thing is interesting when it comes to HST's work.  I say this with a completely straight and honest face:  I have never, ever in my entire life tried an illegal drug.  It's not as if I'm against experimenting with things, because that's definitely not true; in fact there have been times in my life where I've practically been a drunk.  Instead, it's just that I can barely keep track of my own thoughts and behaviors while sober; the thought of floating among cosmos is just more than I could handle.  You would think then that the almost constant references to drugs and drug abuse (everything from ether to mescaline, with lots and lots of things in the middle) in HST's work would be a turn off, but they really aren't.  In fact I have the HST quote about drugs and alcohol posted in my office at work.  Anyway, the drug references in his work aren't as much about the glorification of altered states as they are (at least in my opinion) about how reality is so insane...for some...that it may take illicit drugs to make sense of it all.

When you are 15 years old, it seems as if everything about you is strange.  Thompson made it alright to be strange and smart at the same time.  He also turned the notion of journalism on its head.  When the rest of the world was watching Walter Cronkite talk with a straight face at 6:30pm, you had HST talking about hallucinated bats attacking his rental car.  That's a far cry from "...and that's the way it is".


A fellow blogger described doing some "gonzo journalism" last night, and that's a pretty good description of what we do actually.  I think much of the blogosphere is heavily influenced by HSTs work, as he made it okay to "talk" about events as a journalist, as opposed to simply "reporting" facts.  We all know that facts can sometimes be subjective, which makes the notion about infusing them with a point of view all the more logical.  In some respects you can argue that what HST did...and what many bloggers do...is far more of an honest exercise in information sharing than the supposedly "straight" journalists who claim an objectivity that actually doesn't exist.

The Wisdom of Hunter S. Thompson

Some of my favorite quotes from one of my favorite writers, ever. "The Great Shark Hunt" should be required reading for anyone interested in journalism or political science.


"If I'd written the truth I knew for the past ten years, about 600 people—including me—would be rotting in prison cells from Rio to Seattle today. Absolute truth is a very rare and dangerous commodity in the context of professional journalism."

"I feel the same way about disco as I do about herpes."

"In a nation ruled by swine, all pigs are upwardly 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."

"I hate to advocate drugs, alcohol, violence, or insanity to anyone, but they've always worked for me. "

"The music business is a cruel and shallow money trench, a long plastic hallway where thieves and pimps run free, and good men die like dogs. There's also a negative side. "

"There is nothing more helpless and irresponsible than a man in the depths of an ether binge."

"Jesus! How much more of this cheap-jack bullshit can we be expected to take from that stupid little gunsel? Who gives a fuck if he's lonely and depressed down there in San Clemente? If there were any such thing as true justice in this world, his rancid carcass would be somewhere down around Easter Island right now, in the belly of a hammerhead shark. "
(HST on Richard Nixon, post resignation)

"Bill Clinton does not inhale marijuana, right? You bet. Like I chew on LSD but I don't swallow it.'"

"So much for Objective Journalism. Don’t bother to look for it here -- not under any byline of mine; or anyone else I can think of. With the possible exception of things like box scores, race results, and stock market tabulations, there is no such thing as Objective Journalism. The phrase itself is a pompous contradiction in terms."


...and my two personal, all time favorite HST quotes:

"Buy the ticket, take the ride."

"When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro. "