The Last Words of Hunter S. Thompson

This weekend I was So Damn Sick I had feverish hallucinations while running 104, sweating and shivering and begging for penicilin.

This morning I heard that peak oil production has actually happened, and that's why the shit keeps hitting the fan without a rest.

Tonight I received this as what I used to call a "Stupid Internet Forward" - nowadays, it's the only news I get other than BuzzFlash - are you listening ABNSCNN? Like Democrats, you've become such pablum that I'd rather not read than read you.

Who knows if they really are his last words? Thompson has one priceless moment in here, italicized for easy reading. May the goddess help us all.

We have become a Nazi monster in the eyes of the whole world--a nation of bullies and bastards who would rather kill than live peacefully. We are not just Whores for power and oil, but killer whores with hate and fear in our hearts. We are human scum, and
that is how history will judge us...No redeeming social value. Just whores. Get out of our way, or we'll kill you.

Who does vote for these dishonest shitheads? Who
among us can be happy and proud of having this innocent blood on our hands? Who are these swine? These flag-sucking half-wits who get fleeced and fooled by stupid rich kids like George Bush?

They are the same ones who wanted to have Muhammad Ali locked up for refusing to kill gooks. They speak for all that is cruel and stupid and vicious in the American character. They are the racists and hate mongers among us--they are the Ku Klux Klan. I piss down the throats of these Nazis.

--- Hunter S. Thompson just before offing himself

GMAIL IS SLOW Sadly, Blogger Seems Slower Lately Too.

GMAIL IS SLOW.

Here's a feature - how about you STOP trying to be everything to everyone and simply be a good, working, dependable email program that doesn't take an hour to send a message?

I switched a couple years ago - I NEVER had so much hang with Yahoo. Never. Not once. So gmail has better features - big freakin' deal. I need a mail program that works. All the time. Every day. No matter when I need to send someone something. It needs to work as FAST as my brain because once I get started, I need to send this, read that, google that, wiki this, mail that - and if my mail program is hung up on task #1, I start to get really really irritated. Then I throw things. THIS ISN'T A GAME CLIENT. It's mail. E-mail. The most basic and most important Internet service there is - and if you guys can't master it, screw chat and searchable mail and 2 GB worth of storage space - it's NOT as important as being able to SEND and RECEIVE quickly.

I spend $60 for lightening fast wireless so I can download television shows and read BuzzFlash and play BlackJack and READ MY MAIL all at the same time. Lately, I can all of that except READ MY MAIL. Did I mention that READING MY MAIL and REPLYING TO MY MAIL are the most important things I do on the Internet, and that the company that can manage to assist me with that task WINS?

So tell me, google - how much do I have to pay you to get your priorities straight? To shut down the google labs and skunk works where all your little network engineers design all kinds of silly shit like Google Earth and FOCUS ON THE REAL DEAL: email. The thing the Internet was built for.

I wrote to you and then posted this in my blog, and on my way in here, blogger seemed so much slower than usual. What gives, google? Can't handle all the bandwidth requirements of everything you've bought? Gee, I kinda thought we'd have you around forever...now I'm wondering if the bloat-factor that makes Microsoft such a towering giant isn't going to pull you to the floor as well. Consider the consumer revolt starting now.

Your Lamp

for my friend Sarah DeLucero, who gave me the lamp that I just traded for another lamp:


Sarah:

It had reached a point where your lamp simply seemed too large for my house. With its great arch and brass bulb swinging lazily over my head as I read, it had come to completely dominate my living room and my head space, and while I loved it deeply and thought it was simply too wonderful to be gotten rid of, I knew the time was coming when I would have to remove it from my world.

I made a list - the plan was to first buy one of those simple, inobtrusive halogen-style things, THEN dismantle the lamp and put it into the yard sale pile, which has been growing by leaps and bounds weekly since I returned from Mexico. I kept putting it off because when I wanted to do make the trip to Wal-Mart, I had no cash, and when I had cash, there seemed to be better things to do than go to Wal-Mart.

But tonight was most definitely meant to be the night. Tonight I had the cash. Tonight I had the time for Wal-Mart. So the switch was about to begin, though I still hadn't been able to figure out *exactly* what to do with the lamp when I had a replacement for it, since I was so very much in love with it and wanted a good home for it, and a yard sale just didn't seem able to do it justice.

And then providence intervened. A woman in my life who works as a lighting designer came to my house and was overwhelmed by the lamp - and how her eyes lit up when she heard I didn't want it anymore. "It would be perfect in my studio," she said, and I nodded in agreement, for I had seen her studio and knew that the lamp, looking so awkward in my house, would look graceful and stately in her studio, as it was meant to be seen. "What do you want for it?"

I told her she could have the lamp for the price of a halogen - $25, but that she'd have to take me to Wal-Mart and buy it for me. She was only too happy to do so, and even came in when we got home and helped me put together. We dismantled the old lamp - your lamp - and I brought it outside to her car, noticing the little strip of red tape that I'd used to fix the wire when I received it from you, so long ago, with a split power chord and had to fix it myself.

We'd been through a lot together, me and that old lamp, and now that it was leaving, my only consolation was that it was going to someone who clearly loved it as much as I.

cheers
gregoryp(tm)