no idea what the fuck this is about

There I was. Nothing else. Just me. Blackness. Its strange how you can tell that you're moving even when none of your senses are working. It was some sort of falling and spinning combination. Maybe it was just vertigo. The emptiness slowly faded into blackness. I was definitely falling. I could feel the wind. No more spinning. Just the wind. There was no movement involved in this fall. I could tell. Just like when I could tell before. Then it hit me. Not a physical blow, but a realization. My eyes could work, but I had to make them work. I had no unconscious. Total awareness. Total control. Neuron fire. Nerve transmit. Muscle receive. Muscle act. Repeat. So much is required to just keep the head upright. But don't forget to make the heart pump. Senses sense. Brain coordinate. Too much. Too much. Just let it all stop. Will I still be without the physical things that make me? Oh. I failed. No more control. The unconscious was there. Just hiding. Waiting until it was sorely needed then stepping in when it would be appreciated most. No one is aware of how much it does. Never underestimate your subconscious.

get our shit together

The more I pay attention to the world around me, the more I wish I hadn't. I'm not talking about the natural world, that is wonderful. I mean the man made world: the world that we live in. Unless you're a hermit up in the mountains or out in the desert or somewhere else equally remote, the only natural world that you see is what little is allowed by the human world. Of course you could counter by saying that humans are natural and therefore the human world is natural, but again that's not what I'm getting at. I guess I should define my terms. By the natural world I mean the parts of the world that do not require human input to survive and in some cases are detrimented by human interference. I've pretty much forgotten what I originally set out to say, but what does that matter. Now I'm saying something different. Plans are by necessity meant to be adjusted as the situation changes. The world is like that. As humans were first becoming the dominant species on the planet it was necessary for us to physically conquer our environment. Unfortunately this mentality has carried over into our time. I think we've pretty much conquered nature, at least in the sense that we really don't need to keep beating it down. If this were boxing, I'm pretty sure we'd be damn near a knock out at this point. We need to adapt our fundamental way of living to our modern times. We are at a tipping point. For the first time in our history, and by first time I mean the last hundred or so years, humans are truly capable of physically destroying our world to the point where complex life is no longer possible. This is a terrifying fact that we truly need to acknowledge. WHAT THE FUCK PEOPLE? We need to get our fucking shit together and start acting like we give a damn about the well-being of life other than our own.

The Gonzo Papers

I just finished the whole series. It was a great read. It's taken me a while. I started The Great Shark Hunt: Strange Tales from a Strange Time over a year ago. My reading habits seem to have lapsed at some point after this. But I made up for the lapse by finishing the other three in about two weeks. It was almost by accident that I picked up Generation of Swine: Tales of Shame and Degradation in the '80s. I was desperate for something to read. Having just moved into my apartment, I was without TV or internet, my two standard pass-times. I took this lack of technology more as an opportunity to read more than any sort of hardship. After finishing volume two, my taste for the Doc's writing was piqued. I quickly moved on to Songs of the Doomed: More Notes on the Death of the American Dream, and finished with Better than Sex: Confessions of a Political Junkie. Looking back at my reading schedule, I realize that it somewhat mirrors Thompson's writing schedule, on a smaller scale of course. The Great Shark Hunt was published about 10 years before the next three were put out in what can only be called a flurry of publishing. Anyway, I highly recommend all of these books, especially if you read all of them together. There are a lot of themes that carry over from one volume to the next.