These are ungodly old; maybe someday I'll update with some Fernando Pessoa, and some short poems and profundities and shit; some Emily Dickinson and Einstein and some Wilde and, trite though it may be, some Neitszche.
--President John F. Kennedy, shortly after the Bay of Pigs debacle.
"Here's what I hope will happen on this trip," [Kesey] says. "What I hope will continue to happen, because it's already starting to happen. All of us are beginning to do our thing, and we're going to keep doing it, right out front, and none of us are going to deny what other people are doing."
"Bullshit," says Jane Burton.
This brings Kesey up short for a moment, but he just rolls with it.
"That's Jane," he says. "And she's doing her thing. Bullshit. That's her thing and she's doing it."
"None of us are going to deny what other people are doing. If saying bullshit is somebody's thing, then he says bullshit. If somebody is an ass-kicker, then that's what he's going to do on this trip, kick asses. He's going to do it right out front and nobody is going to have anything to get pissed off about. He can just say, 'I'm sorry I kicked you in the ass, but I'm not sorry I'm an ass-kicker. That's what I do, kick people in the ass.' Everybody is going to be what they are, and whatever they are, there's not going to be anything to apologize about. What we are, we're going to wail with on this trip."
--excerpt from "The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test", by Tom Wolfe, Ken Kesey, and alla the other Merry Pranksters.
What did your face look like before your parents begat you?
--Hui-neng, answering "what is the secret of Zen?"
And for just a moment I had reached the point of ecstasy that I always wanted to reach, which was
the complete step across chronological time into timeless shadows, and wonderment in the bleakness
of the mortal realm, and the sensation of death kicking at my heels to move on, with a phantom
dogging its own heels, and myself hurrying to a plank where all the angels dove off and flew into the
holy void of uncreated emptiness, the potent and inconceivable radiancies shining in bright Mind
Essence, innumerable lotus-lands falling open in the magic mothswarm of heaven. I could hear an
indescribable seething roar which wasn’t in my ear but everywhere and had nothing to do with
sounds. I realized that I had died and been reborn numberless times but just didn’t remember
especially because the transitions from life to death and back to life are so ghostly easy, a magical
action for naught, like falling asleep and waking up again a million times, the utter casualness and
deep ignorance of it. I realized it was only because of the stability of the intrinsic Mind that these
ripples of birth and death took place, like the action of wind on a sheet of pure, serene, mirror-like
water. I felt sweet, swinging bliss, like a big shot of heroin in the mainline vein; like a gulp of wine late in the afternoon and it makes you shudder; my feet tingled. I thought I was going to die the very next moment.
--Jack Kerouac, On the Road
...I realize all the uncountable manifestations the thinking-mind invents to place wall of horror before its pure perfect realization that there is no wall and no horror just Transcendental Empty Kissable Milk Light of Everlasting Eternity's true and perfect empty nature.--I know everything's alright but I want proof and the Buddhas and the Virgin Marys are there reminding me of the solemn pledge of faith in this harsh and stupid earth where we rage our so-called lives in a see of worry, meat for Chicagos of Graves--right this minute my very father and my very brother lie side by side in mud in the North and I'm supposed to be smarter than they are--being quick I am dead.
--Jack Kerouac, Tristessa
"Institutional racism, prejudice, homophobia, antisemitism, and hate of any kind, are, at the risk of sounding absolutist, always intolerable. And we need to make sure that our elected representatives do their utmost to make the world an unsafe place for despots, demagogues, and all those officials who preach and carry out hate and violence."
--Moby, Play
"Some of the central tenents of the teachings of Christ are nonjudgementalism, non-violence, and humility. How can these people call themselves Christians and at the same time call for and celebrate acts of violence? I love Christ, but I'm utterly dismayed at the teachings and actions of a lot of these supposed 'Christians.'"
--Moby, Play
"...And while I'm getting worked up about the rights of prisoners, let me take a minute to point out the utter absurdity of consensual crimes in a supposedly free society. How can we justify locking people up for committing actions that have no demonstratable repercussions to anyone else? If someone's actions compromise the rights or will of another individual, then fine punish them. But if someone's actions don't affect anyone other than the person committing the actions, then what business is it of the state's? I'm specifically referring to drug use. I don't use drugs, and I think that drugs can be terribly destructive and dangerous, but I don't see how the state can arrest an adult for doing something to their own body. An enlightened state should warn its citizens about dangerous activities, but it shouldn't be allowed to lock people up for doing things to themselves. I do not want any government making decisions regarding what I can put into or do to my body. An individual's own body is not the jurisdiction of the state...Because we find something distasteful is not justification enough for us to deem it criminal."
--Moby, Play
"And now the forces marshaled around the concept of the group have declared a war of extermination on that preciousness, the mind of man. By disparagement, by starvation, by repression, forced direction, and the stunning hammerblows of conditioning, the free, roving mind is being pursued, roped, blunted, drugged. It is a sad suicidal course our species seems to have taken.
"And this I believe: that the free, exploring mind of the individual human is the most valuable thing in the world. And this I would fight for: the freedom of the mind to take any direction it wishes, undirected. And this I must fight against: any idea, religion, or government which limits or destroys the individual. This is what I am and what I am about. I can understand why a system built on a pattern must try to destroy the free mind, for that is one thing which can by inspection destroy such a system. Surely I can understand this, and I hate it and I will fight against it to preserve the one thing that seperates us from the uncreative beasts."
--John Steinbeck, "East of Eden."
Just a little reminder: when I talk about the doomed, the scum, the people who no longer give a
shit, the people who don't care who runs the country...
...when I talk about the filth of the city...
...I'm talkin about you.
--Spider Jerusalem
And, to be honost, we know how bad our record-keeping is.
So if we were to plant "evidence" of our present/their past here and there, waiting to be dug up by their archaeologists...I mean,
they'd have no way of knowing that our condoms really didn't come in only two sizes --11" and Super. Nor would they be aware that I wasn't actually worshipped as a Testicle God by all women in America.
Fuck'em. It's all they deserve.
--Spider Jerusalem
Right now, there is a new religion invested in the City every thirty-five minutes.
And yet, strangely, flamethrowers are still illegal.
There is no balance in this place.
--Spider Jerusalem
don't ever take away from me my pornography
we obviously don't agree on what's obscene
i have the right to choose what i
want to see and read
don't try to take away from me
my right to privacy what i
do is no one's business but me
so stay in your missionary position
i hope that you get bored to death
there's no way i'm going thru life
having vanilla sex
the government's trying to get in
your bedroom you better lock your
door and close your shades because
there could be someone watching you today
why do you try to make things illegal
why do we have to be 21
are you afraid that people are having
too much fun
why do you care what i do in my bedroom
why do you want to know how i screw
it seems to me you've got nothing better
to do.
--NOFX, lyrics to the song "Vanilla Sex" off their album "S&M Airlines".
"How about that Congress of ours? A couple of sociopathic kids shoot the hell out of their fellow students, and, in the wake of this horror, our elected House of Representatives bickers over modest gun-control legislation and sweeping, censorious plans to castrate entertainment. The result? A doomed-to-die-aborning resolution to allow the Ten Commandments to be posted in schoolrooms. And, eager to stop an epidemic of flag burning that exists only in their poll-soaked heads, they pitch an equally doomed Constitutional Amendment that would rob the precious symbol of exactly what makes it precious."
--Frank Miller
"The next time you hear somebody complain about our 'do nothing' Congress, count your blessings. Pray for gridlock. Larry, Curly, and Moe are best left bopping each other and keeping their pandering mits off the Constitution."
--Frank Miller
"If more stupid people killed themselves over stupid rock songs there would be less stupid people."
--Marilyn Manson
"They're just machines. Simple machines preprogrammed to play their little games, punch their little heads, and fondle their little privates."
--Wobbly Headed Bob, on the subject of people
"Why would I want anyone to feel the way I hate feeling?"
--Squee's philosophy on revenge and whatnot.
