The real power in America is held by a fast-emerging new Oligarchy of pimps and preachers who see no need for Democracy or fairness or even trees, except maybe the ones in their own yards, and they don’t mind admitting it. They worship money and power and death. Their ideal solution to all the nation’s problems would be another 100 Year War.
There is a huge body of evidence to support the notion that me and the police were put on this earth to do extremely different things and never to mingle professionally with each other, except at official functions, when we all wear ties and drink heavily and whoop it up like the natural, good-humored wild boys that we know in our hearts that we are... These occasions are rare, but they happen – despite the forked tongue of fate that has put us forever on different paths...
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.
How low do you have to stoop in this country to be President?
All around us were people I had spent ten years avoiding – shapeless women in wool bathing suits, dull-eyed men with hairless legs and self-conscious laughs, all Americans, all fearsomely alike. These people should be kept at home, I thought; lock them in the basement of some goddamn Elks Club and keep them pacified with erotic movies; if they want a vacation, show them a foreign art film; and if they still aren’t satisfied, send them into the wilderness and run them with vicious dogs.
I bought a small bottle of beer for fifteen cents and sat on a bench in the clearing, feeling like an old man. The scene I had just witnessed brought back a lot of memories – not of things I had done but of things I had failed to do, wasted hours and frustrated moments and opportunities forever lost because time had eaten so much of my life and I would never get it back.
This maybe the year when we finally come face to face with ourselves; finally just lay back and say it – that we are really just a nation of 220 million used car salesmen with all the money we need to buy guns, and no qualms at all about killing anybody else in the world who tries to make us uncomfortable.
As your attorney I advise you to get the chiliburger. It’s a hamburger with chili on it.
This wavering paradox is a pillar of the outlaw stance. A man who has blown all his options can’t afford the luxury of changing his ways. He has to capitalize on whatever he has left, and he can’t afford to admit-no matter how often he’s reminded of it-that every day of his life takes him farther down a blind alley.
You will be flogged for being right and flogged for being wrong, and it hurts both ways – but it doesn’t hurt as much when you’re right.
Life just seems too huge and too fascinating for me to begin thinking about curing my restlessness at this stage of the game. Maybe later.
Living on pills, phone calls unmade, people unseen, pages unwritten, money unmade, pressure piling up all around to make some kind of breakthrough and get moving again. Get the gum off the rails, finish something, croak this awful habit of not ever getting to the end- of anything.
Who is the happier man, he who has braved the storm of life and lived or he who has stayed securely on shore and merely existed?
These are bad times for people who like to sit outside the library at dawn on a rainy morning and get ripped to the tits on crank and powerful music.
As for LSD, I highly recommend it. We had a fine, wild weekend and no trouble at all. The feeling it produces is hard to describe. ‘Intensity’ is a fair word for it. Try half a cube at first, just sit in the living room and turn on the music – after the kids have gone to bed. But never take it in uncomfortable or socially tense situations. And don’t have anybody around whom you don’t like.
The line between madness and masochism was already hazy;.
This is one of the hallmarks of Vegas hospitality. The only bedrock rule is Don’t Burn the Locals. Beyond that, nobody cares. They would rather not know. If Charlie Manson checked into the Sahara tomorrow morning, nobody would hassle him as long as he tipped big.
Hey, honkies!” my attorney screamed. “Goddamnit, I’m serious! I want to sell you some pure fuckin’ smack!
I’m bound to go to heaven because I’ve already served my time in hell.
The only thing I ever saw that came close to Objective Journalism was a closed-circuit TV setup that watched shoplifters in the General Store at Woody Creek, Colorado.