Oscar Wilde and A Little Lightning
Finally! The Senate gave Bush his first veto overide today! It was for a $23 billion water projects measure affecting locales across the country. The money has not been appropriated, but it’s a first step in assuring protections and projects to improve local damn and water issues around the country. It was 79 to 14, far more than the two-thirds needed to override the veto that President Bush cast last Friday. A little more proof that all politics is local…
The news put me in a good mood adding to the fact that I’ve been reading more Oscar Wilde for the last few days, which makes anyone giddy. Of course, laughing out loud to "The Importance Of Being Earnest" makes me think of Hunter’s humor and sense of fun. Then I received a phone call from our good friend Tex, the Woody Creeker Poet. He was calling about his poem which is to run in the next issue. His call reminded me of a funny piece Hunter wrote in Generation of Swine about Tex being struck by lightning. Hunter added to the story in Kingdom of Fear – and here is a portion of it for today’s HST wisdom, which I feel in my bones:
My friend Tex got hit by lightning one gloomy afternoon in the parking lot of the Woody Creek Tavern. “It kicked the mortal shit out of me,” he said later. “It blasted me fifty goddamn feet across the road and over the snow fence. I was out for forty minutes, and when I woke up I smelled like death.
I was there that day, and I thought a bomb had gone off right in front of me. I was unconscious for a while, but not for long. When I woke up I was being dragged toward a shiny sky-blue ambulance by two well-meaning medics from the Sheriff’s Office… I twisted out of their grasp and back against and ice machine. “Okay, boys,” I said calmly, “the Joke is over. Let’s not get crazy about this. Give me some air, gentleman.” I croaked. “I feel a little jangled, but I know it will pass. Get your hands off me, you pigfucker.”
— Hunter S. Thompson, Kingdom of Fear, 2003
Until next time, your friend,
Anita Thompson
p.s. the first bunurying explaination is in the first act of "The Importance of Being Earnest" you can find here http://www.public.iastate.edu/~spires/Concord/earnest12.html cheers!
