Satanic Interlopers!

Note to contards: Conservipedia will never be pure as the computers and servers you use are liberal and gay.

Liberal because the physics that runs it originated in the big bang that you deny. Gay because the father of modern computer software was brilliant and gay. Although, the transistors used are 1/3 racist (thanks to the brilliant asshole, Shockley.)

Stick to traditional stone and chisel. Or if you really want to get geeky, go find the planet Dune and munch on some sand worm shit, er, spice.

@ManchuCandidate: The other father was a Hungarian Jew (von Neumann). And thus related to Jebus. Brain meltdown!

And speaking of Turing, I took a class at UCLA from Alonzo Church. Old Alonzo was one weird dude. Got in trouble for ripping a poster of Angela Davis off the wall in the Philosophy Dept office. I also took a class from Angela Davis, but that’s another story.

Where can we post a call to help us Zombify the psychocon bible?

Ah, The KJV. But since this is the literal word of god surely it can’t be cut or changed? Commissioned as it was by James I of England, V of Scotland and well-known great steaming homo.

Driving to Rochester the other other day I passed a 3-car pile-up. No one seemed to be hurt, apart from one young woman in the back seat of one of the cars preparing a whiplash injury case for herself. Was it wrong of me to be quite so pleased when I saw the cars belonged to the Church of Life? Was my impulse to yell out the window, “Jesus too busy watching the NFL?” However, as a humanist, such behavior seemed beneath me. And let me tell you, there isn’t much I reckon is beneath me. As anyone who’s seen my work can attest.

P.S. I still don’t get the zombie thing. Perhaps we might start the camp Bible?

@Benedick: OMG, I am so using “Jesus too busy watching the NFL?” from now on whenever I can.

@Dodgerblue: Speaking of Turing, dammit, I am going to recycle this one forever, it struck me reading the transcript of a Palin interview, that she would fail a turing test.

OK, I’m off to a public conference thingy with our Mayor LooseZipper. I may ask him how he can handle so much sex at his age, given his frenetic public schedule.

@Dodgerblue: LZ is making calls for the incumbent mayor of Albuquerque for today’s election. The white Repugnat looks strong versus two Hispanic men, incl. the guy I helped in two congressional campaigns. He would have made a hell of a member of Congress. The R has been running a “blame the Mexicans” race, which is odd considering that his business background is built on his Latina wife getting all sorts of minority set-asides for “her” contracting firm. No one ever brought that up.

TJ/ Paramount merges its Feature Films and Home Video Division- 50 people laid off. Not a lot, but still.

Nerve-wracking.

@Tommmcatt is hunkered down in the trenches: Now I remember what Prommie’s referring to — the Comcast bid to devour NBC Uni.

A “conservative” version of the Bible. Well, at last they have revealed themselves. The fundies hate Jesus.

I’m reading “The Family” now. There is some fucked up shit in there. The leader of the group looks to Hitler as a positive role model for their power hungry cult.

@Jamie Sommers needs a new wardrobe: Next month’s Stinque book club suggestion, or will our heads collectively asplode?

@SanFranLefty: Since it’ll be about a year after the election, how about we all post about our favorite political book(s)? I have several I could say a little about (i.e., Robert Caro’s LBJ bios, etc.)

@SanFranLefty: Naw, it’s not that good.

@redmanlaw: “Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail 1972”. No better political analysis of politics (or football) necessary. Plus, Ma Nabisco bought me a new (paperback) copy this summer, not realizing that that torn up thing shoved into the bookshelf was the original, so I’ve been meaning to re-read it.

@SanFranLefty: Jon Krakauer’s new book about Pat Tilman? Surely it is at everybody’s public library right now (I just ordered a copy for the library in my part of ONG).

@The Nabisco Quiver are Go!: I remember that one well, Muskie and the Ibogaine addiction was the standout. What one must remember about Hunter, though, was that he wrote fiction. He said as much, if you asked him. Hell, all that we do here, with wild riffing on speculative evil deeper motivations on the part of the politicians we talk about, its all pure Hunter Thompson, now that I think about it, really, this, what we do, must be connected with the place Hunter Thompson held in the counterculture we all grew up with, Hunter, and Vonnegut, and their influence, its the common thread in this, what this Stinque is, irreverant, cynical, unafraid to engage in creative speculation.

It would be great to make an HST book a book club selection, with a special emphasis on noting the elements of HST’s style and perspective, that don’t just have influence, that actually created a genre, our genre.

@Promnight: Naw. We’re more DFW.

@JNOV sez hit Vick in the head witta battery: You better mean in the good way. He hasn’t had the same degree of impact on the world, he is harder to understand, he is so much more soulful, real, no false bravado, HST was all false bravado, DFW was all open raw wound, to be intelligent and sensitive and empathic, too, to understand every side of everything always and simultaneously, that was DFW, and to express it, that was uniquely DFW. But JNOV, even simply being able to “get” DFW is a gift that this world needs, know what I mean? He needs apostles to spread his word.

@JNOV sez hit Vick in the head witta battery: Now that I think about it, you are the only person I have ever met I could even talk about DFW with, and know that the person I was talking to was there with me.

There is no doubt or room for argument here, DFW must be the next bookclub book, JNOV, you gotta, you just have to, make these people here read Infinite Jest, all the way through.

@Promnight: I didn’t realize there was a bad meaning. Yes, I meant it in a good way. I don’t know how to express this thought, so bear with me. That whole Tortured Artist Thing is trite, but it’s true. HST and DFW and [fill in the blank with you or me or damned near everybody] struggle with life. Many of us reach for relief in bottles or pills or top-shelf fancy stuff, hootch or Purple Drank or religion or some form of artistic endeavor that will dull, postpone, exorcise, convey or eradicate pain, hopelessness or that feeling that something is just not right with the world. Or with us. With both?

So, you get these folks like Flannery O’Connor and Thompson and Faulkner and DFW who are like: Everything is Not Okay. There are motherfucking snakes on this motherfucking plane! (Seriously — watch this brief clip from “Weeds.”) And then the reader who has seen these snakes and been like, “Oh, shit! How come no one else has seen them, too? It must be me with the problem,” well, you feel a little bit better because you know you’re not alone, although the planes are still infested with those goddamned snakes.

So, then you’re like, okay. Are these snakes going to kill me? Maybe I can co-exist with these motherfucking snakes on my motherfucking plane, so you try to create some sort of treaty with them. But, see, the snakes are wily, or maybe you get tired of them or they get tired of you, and there’s no room on the plane for you and all those damned snakes.

Hunter’s approach was to try to become one with the snakes, to understand the snakes and somehow conquer the snake. He didn’t, and i suspect he was afraid of the fuckers the whole time. Hunter – 0; Snakes – 1.

DFW was like, these snakes have got to go! They are no good; they are sucking my soul dry, so he enlisted outside help — snake experts. Well, the snake experts were pretty inept and the result was DFW – 0; Snakes – 2.

I think before we try to get people to read Inifinite Jest, maybe we should read some of his essays and short stories. Infinite Jest is overwhelming, not just because it’s longer than the Bible and more mindbending, and man, is it mindbending, but it’s a scathing appraisal of life, expectations, hubris, “wasted” potential, superficiality, value. I dunno. So much of it is so fucking hilarious, but it’s a major downer, too.

I think one of my favorites of his is “Consider the Lobster.” I’m not really sure why. I’d like a t-shirt made that reads “Consider the Lobster.” And I know this one has made the rounds, and people are probably bored as hell with it, but I love his commencement speech “This is Water.”

You have to have a pretty strong mental constitution to read his stuff, which is why I haven’t read everything yet. I wasn’t surprised that he committed suicide.

@The Nabisco Quiver are Go!: Is that the Jimmy Carter one?

@JNOV sez hit Vick in the head witta battery: Consider the Lobster is a fantastic choice.

The bad way to be like him is to end your life as he did. The good way to be like him is to feel the pain and turn it into something beautiful, as he did, in his art.

He suffered from deep, bad, darkest clinical depression, a chemical, physical illness, he did not kill himself because he believed it a philosophical and logical response to the world, and I truly believe he would have said that.

Here is what I think is the critical thing to know, to be able to bear the fucking outrageous, roaring injustice, pain, and horror of the world.

Each of us can, individually, prevail over the injustice and pain of the world. We can. It does not require that we bring an end to all pain and suffering and injustice in the world, noone ever will do that.

What it requires is simply to accept that prevailing in the face of the horror of it all, is a victory, prevailing by living your own life committed to and acting with fairness and justice and lovingkindness, despite all the forces which provoke one to just join in the shit parade. That is the only victory any one person can have, and it is enough, simply to prevail and continue, in the face of it, is a victory. Don’t let the bastards get you down, is a simplistic way of saying it.

If all of those with a supremely sensitive, intelligent, kind, loving soul, were to give up in the face of what they, more than anyone else, feel of the pain and horror of the injustice and suffering of the world, the world would be much worse, because good and evil only exist within good and evil people, and for the very best of people, the most sensitive and just, and righteous, in their very souls, those who quest and desire more than most, a just and fair world, if those people all were to decide that its not worth merely continuing, and making if not the world, at least their own life, just and fair and just and fair in its interaction with others, then evil will prevail, because the best would be gone and only the evil would remain.

Simply existing and persevering in the face of the pain and suffering, its a victory, just to live and live rightly, despite that the world in which you live is not right, simply to defy it, just to defy it, stand in the face of it, and say, “fuck you, you will not bring me down to your level,” to say that to the world, is the best we can do. And it is supremely worth doing.

I love you, JNOV.

@Promnight: I love you, too. I really do.

@Promnight: Thank you for this. I needed it. On a related note, one of my favorite poems by one of my favorite poets, the great Emily Dickenson:

If I can stop one heart from breaking,
I shall not live in vain;
If I can ease one life the aching,
Or cool one pain,
Or help one fainting robin
Up to his nest again,
I shall not live in vain.

ADD: As one of the sort of cat-herders on the Stinque Book Club, I agree with JNOV that Infinite Jest might be a bit much unless we plan on discussing it in March. But since Stinquers are the kings and queens of parentheticals and asides, I think that Consider the Lobster would be up our alley.