ODE TO DR. THOMPSON
By Doug Cunningham
Those goddamned giant bats are viscious bastards this morning, dive-bombing mercilessly into my brain, relentlessly harassing and screeching into my soul as they beat their wings, furiously triggering the worst nightmares I’ve ever had. Trapped in this bizarre agony, a horror show plays across my consciousness on this foul, gray February Monday. Images of a Gollum-like mentally and morally misshapen shrub of a human being claiming to be “President of the United States” lecturing Europe on “values” and “freedom” flash strobe-like across my mind as the awful news pierces the macabe political performance flickering across my TV screen. Wretching from the very thought of such a gruesome spectacle, the blood of tens of thousands war victims washes up around me as mindless TV news anchors sputter inanities behind botox smiles through blinding bleached-white teeth that reflect only the banality of their worthless “journalism”.
The good doctor is dead. The Shark Hunt is over. Fear and Loathing looms larger than at any time in history and Hunter S. Thompson’s shining light on the path of truth has been shot out forever.
Jesus! What a kick in the balls! What a torturous, brutal blow to the solar plexus of consciousness! Hoping for hallucination, the reality nonetheless seeps in. It’s finally gotten weird enough for me.
There is no justice in a world where neo-cons flourish and Gonzo’s godfather snuffs out his life. Hunter lived life his way, though, and apparently ended it his way, too. The electric energy and laser-like explosive power of his words will reverberate against the halls of power forever. Generations of swine to come will be exposed and assaulted by those words, by that Gonzo consciousness that will unmask them for what they are.
We are on the edge of a socio-political /cultural desert and the drugs aren’t taking hold. If Richard Nixon represented the darkly venal and incurably violent heart of America, then George W. Bush is the deformed bastard child of perverse religiosity that magnifies that violent venality and blesses it with demonically twisted “righteousness”. Manifest destiny indeed…
We are all standing by the urinal with the leader of the free world as he mutters “Fuck the poor.” Hunter Thompson was the menacing outlaw Doberman of a journalist always threatening to lunge straight for the crotch of the Nixons of this world. His life is over but his spirit still soars above the wreckage of our political and social landscape, even as the vultures of the right circle over the remains of the New Deal ,the Great Society and the counterculture.
The freedom and truth expressed in the writings of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson dwarf the Big Lies of the Talibush. And Thompson was no sixties relic. That gunshot he fired doesn’t blow away his lifetime of courageous, outrageous rage against the machine.
Standing in this valley of doom with the dark clouds rolling in around me I can see that high-water mark on the western horizon where the great wave of counterculture rebellion crested and rolled back, Hunter. I can see it. But I can also smell the rising tide of resistance that has just begun to build. I can feel the first faint tremors beneath my feet that will soon bring down the walls of Jericho and it was your horn that made the first and deepest cracks in that wall.
Gonzo forever!
Doug Cunningham
ODE TO DR. THOMPSON
By Doug Cunningham
Those goddamned giant bats are viscious bastards this morning, dive-bombing mercilessly into my brain, relentlessly harassing and screeching into my soul as they beat their wings, furiously triggering the worst nightmares I’ve ever had. Trapped in this bizarre agony, a horror show plays across my consciousness on this foul, gray February Monday. Images of a Gollum-like mentally and morally misshapen shrub of a human being claiming to be “President of the United States” lecturing Europe on “values” and “freedom” flash strobe-like across my mind as the awful news pierces the macabe political performance flickering across my TV screen. Wretching from the very thought of such a gruesome spectacle, the blood of tens of thousands war victims washes up around me as mindless TV news anchors sputter inanities behind botox smiles through blinding bleached-white teeth that reflect only the banality of their worthless “journalism”.
The good doctor is dead. The Shark Hunt is over. Fear and Loathing looms larger than at any time in history and Hunter S. Thompson’s shining light on the path of truth has been shot out forever.
Jesus! What a kick in the balls! What a torturous, brutal blow to the solar plexus of consciousness! Hoping for hallucination, the reality nonetheless seeps in. It’s finally gotten weird enough for me.
There is no justice in a world where neo-cons flourish and Gonzo’s godfather snuffs out his life. Hunter lived life his way, though, and apparently ended it his way, too. The electric energy and laser-like explosive power of his words will reverberate against the halls of power forever. Generations of swine to come will be exposed and assaulted by those words, by that Gonzo consciousness that will unmask them for what they are.
We are on the edge of a socio-political /cultural desert and the drugs aren’t taking hold. If Richard Nixon represented the darkly venal and incurably violent heart of America, then George W. Bush is the deformed bastard child of perverse religiosity that magnifies that violent venality and blesses it with demonically twisted “righteousness”. Manifest destiny indeed…
We are all standing by the urinal with the leader of the free world as he mutters “Fuck the poor.” Hunter Thompson was the menacing outlaw Doberman of a journalist always threatening to lunge straight for the crotch of the Nixons of this world. His life is over but his spirit still soars above the wreckage of our political and social landscape, even as the vultures of the right circle over the remains of the New Deal ,the Great Society and the counterculture.
The freedom and truth expressed in the writings of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson dwarf the Big Lies of the Talibush. And Thompson was no sixties relic. That gunshot he fired doesn’t blow away his lifetime of courageous, outrageous rage against the machine.
Standing in this valley of doom with the dark clouds rolling in around me I can see that high-water mark on the western horizon where the great wave of counterculture rebellion crested and rolled back, Hunter. I can see it. But I can also smell the rising tide of resistance that has just begun to build. I can feel the first faint tremors beneath my feet that will soon bring down the walls of Jericho and it was your horn that made the first and deepest cracks in that wall.
Gonzo forever!
Doug Cunningham