The Gazetteer reports that Hunter S. Thompson shot himself Sunday night. I was never a real Thompson fan, having only managed to get through Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas and Hell's Angels. I suppose, though, that in some sense Thompson was a sort of progenitor in spirit, if not in kind, of the blogosphere.
I think (and I'm sure that I'm saying nothing that hasn't been said before) that the need or urge of bloggers to chronicle the world as they see it is an important and powerful thing in the age in which we live. There are people out there covering politics, law, medicine, culture — just about every facet of human endeavour and experience we can think of. Whether out of vanity, the desire to provide citations, or out of simple courtesy, etc., bloggers spray links like Roland the Headless Thompson Gunner sprayed bullets and in the process provide a level of cross-reference and redundancy which has never been equalled to their daily record of the world. The sheer density which makes it impossible to wade through it all also makes it impossible for mainstream media, corporations, power brokers and politcians to erase any knowledge that ever hits the web. The record exists and will remain.
I think (and I'm sure that I'm saying nothing that hasn't been said before) that the need or urge of bloggers to chronicle the world as they see it is an important and powerful thing in the age in which we live. There are people out there covering politics, law, medicine, culture — just about every facet of human endeavour and experience we can think of. Whether out of vanity, the desire to provide citations, or out of simple courtesy, etc., bloggers spray links like Roland the Headless Thompson Gunner sprayed bullets and in the process provide a level of cross-reference and redundancy which has never been equalled to their daily record of the world. The sheer density which makes it impossible to wade through it all also makes it impossible for mainstream media, corporations, power brokers and politcians to erase any knowledge that ever hits the web. The record exists and will remain.
2 comments:
It's interesting MJ, but somehow, maybe it's technique or maybe it's the weird liberal/libertarian fusion POV I dunno, Thompson seems to be the only point of true contact between Left Blogistan and the Freepers.
Re the Gunner Piece...I believe Thompson quoted it somewhere (he was a real Zevon freak) but, what the hell, like last night with the quotes....I'm not gonna go a googlin' I just want to remember it how I remember it.
Which reminds me of an interview I heard from a now-curmudgeonly Pudge not long ago in which he said he hated watching video of his body english-assisted game 6 homerun because he wanted to remember the ball wrapping around the foul pole the way he saw it, not the way the camera saw it.
And sometimes I feel the same way about the hard-eye Google's green monster.
I can see Fisk's point. Tough enough to be sure about what we remember seeing. Must be extremely hard on him to have his unique perspective on that home run threatened with contamination a million times a year by what the cameras saw.
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