Happened to be at the farmer's market in town when there was a protest about some stupid pipeline for water bullshit, which was a great thing to protest, but the protest itself seemed so sterile to me. A bunch of white people standing around blah-blah-blah-ing, wearing cheap t-shirts, and feeling all good about themselves for standing up against something, then jumping into their Audis and Volvo and Benz stationwagons or Jeep Grand Cherokees, and rushing home to their comfortable world. Very masturbatory, which is what most protest seems to be, whether it be against local water pipelines or international corporate globalization.
Dr. Raoul Duke HST was suicided recently, and everybody ooh and ahhed about his style of writing, which was more extension of his living than a separate entity, which was stupid because people love to gush about the dead when they don't give half a shit about them when alive. All this'll mean is a second crappy movie starring Johnny Depp. But a co-conspirator in that whole Gonzo journalism was Oscar Zeta Acosta, or the attorney in Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas (or Benecio del Toro if you're a young buck and that's your only reference). Acosta's The Revolt of the Cockroach People is one of my few Bibles, and I've given away probably ten copies of it in my lifetime already. I find it a much more proper primer on protest. One of my favorite images, which may actually be an HST memory rather than in the book, is Acosta standing in front of some judge's house after having set the guy's yard on fire, laughing maniacally while holding a jug of wine as the judge opens the door to see his well-manicured yard burning. Motherfuckin' awesome. Now that's a protest.
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