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Then I guess the question is: What is the benefit of being an asshole?

Its dirty, in a good way.  Like Naked Lunch, only not so much with the homosexual death-trip stuff.  Funny, too.  And he makes a pretty good case for living in the desert and never being photographed ever again.

It's pretty good so far.

That's all.

Evil Masons Steal from Little Dead Girl

Fuckin Masons

See you on Stavromula Beta!

And Leonard Cohen kicks ass

Soup.

Kerry Thornley's testimony before the Warren Comission is over here.

Mr. JENNER. But your reading had some reasonable amount of organization or direction?
Mr. THORNLEY. None whatsoever; no, sir. It never has.
Mr. JENNER. Describe yourself in that respect. Where are you, a middle-of-the-roader?
Mr. THORNLEY. I would say I am an extreme rightist. I call myself a libertarian, which is that I believe in the complete sovereignty of the individual, or at least as much individual liberty as is practical under any given system.
Mr. JENNER. You don't have to be an extreme rightist to believe in the sovereignty of the individual.
Mr. THORNLEY. Well, it is getting that way in this country today. At least most people who listen to me talk call me a rightist. I wouldn't say so either. I think the political spectrum was fine for France at the time of the revolution. I don't think it applies to the United States of America today in any respect whatsoever. I don't think you can call a man an extreme leftist, rightist, or middle-of-the-roader and have him classified that simply.

Gads!  Free books?  Pulp sci fi?  I must be slipping in my old age.  Still got some?

I just picked up 'Deus Irae', PKD and Roger Zelazny writing together.  Looks spiff!

How about Nyarlathotep then?  How can you be soul AND messenger of the Other Gods?  Isn't souling a full-time gig?  

And does my soul fly nights as a bricklayer?  I'm curious now

And he's got about a thousand short stories, ranging from brilliant to terrible.  I just finished 'For a Breath I Tarry' and it was great, like the Book of Job with robots.

Jack of Shadows  makes suicide hysterical, and its only a novella.

'No More Secondhand God' has some of his poetry.  Good stuff, IMHO.  An excerpt:

The revolution has come -
set on fire from the top.
Let it burn swiftly.
Neither the branches, trunk, nor roots will be endangered.
Only last years leaves and
the parasite-bearded moss and orchids
will not be there
when the next spring brings fresh growth
and free standing flowers.
. . .
Here is God's purpose -
for God to me, it seems,
is a verb
not a noun,
proper or improper;
is the articulation
not the art, objective or subjective;
is loving,
not the abstraction "love" commanded or entreated;
is knowledge dynamic,
not legislative code,
not proclamation law,
not academic dogma, nor ecclesiastic canon.
Yes, God is a verb,
the most active,
connoting the vast harmonic
reordering of the universe
from unleashed chaos of energy.
And there is born unheralded
a great natural peace,
not out of exclusive
pseudo-static security
but out of including, refining, dynamic balancing.
Naught is lost.
Only the false and nonexistent are dispelled.

And I've thought through to tomorrow
which is also today.
The telephone rings
and you say to me
Hello Buckling this is Christopher; or
Daddy it's Allegra; or
Mr. Fuller this is the Telephone Company Business Office;
and I say you are inaccurate.
Because I knew you were going to call
and furthermore I recognize
that it is God who is "speaking."

And you say
aren't you being fantastic?
And knowing you I say no.

At least a quarter of a billion people
sit quietly for hours in
darkened halls.
And they say they are "at the movies"
not looking at anyone or anything real.
They certainly don't see the screen.
I say they are looking at God.
. . .
and there is now only half a world left,
and one-half of our time remaining
in which to
"let our hair all the way down"
and say, "We have plenty, we have
the means, the ability, the knowledge.
Let us start the mechanism
to creative account;
not to vast and vaster destruction."

,ĶNo one in America will say that its leader
is overstepping his authorized bounds
if he takes sincere, forthright, and
adequately big steps
to accomplish world healing.

God will be handling the radio-telegraph
for such a mandated dictatorship; and
Democracy is not challenged by such a dictator
whose very first move must and will be
tidal-waved with Demos authority.

Stop "calling names"
Names that are meaningless;
You can't suppress God
by killing off people
which are, physically, only trans-ceiver mechanisms
Through which God is broadcasting.

But his requirement is dynamic and
if man-mechanism proves too inefficient as an invention
he will immediately devise a cataclysmic improvement.

- R. Buckminster Fuller, 1940


Don't let the math scare you, Fuller was a true polymath and his writing reflects it.  Just find the angle (or omnidirectional construct of your choice) you can handle and run with it.

Zelazny rocks my pulpy, sci-fi soul on a regular basis.  Go read

'Lord of Light'
'A Night in the Lonesome October'
'Roadmarks'

And if you have way too much spare time, read all ten of the Amber books.  I'm almost halfway, somehwer in the middle of the fourth book.

Random notion:  If memory serves (and it never does), wasn't there a talking flute on hr puffinstuff?  Cross-reference with Nyarlathotep, "the crawling chaos that howls beyond the stars... surrounded by idiot flute players".

Incidently, I came across 'The Dark Messenger', by John Beal while I was looking for the HPL quote.   Interesting, tho the purple text on black makes it impossible to read.

Hackey sacks have holes

So do I.  

"There are at least two kinds of games: finite and infinite. A finite game is a game that has fixed rules and boundaries, that is played for the purpose of winning and thereby ending the game. An infinite game has no fixed rules or boundaries. In an infinite game you play with the boundaries and the purpose is to continue the game."

"Finite and Infinite Games - A Vision of Life as Play and Possibility" by James P. Carse

Dibs on the Oort Cloud