Saturday, February 17, 2007

From the General’s Desk: the Gonzo Letters


Greetings Gonzites, your General iSense here, ready to serve. But serve what? The eternal question. To you. To whit: What, if anything, do we do next? Where do we go from here and for what? And perhaps most importantly, who’s paying for all this? Not me, I can tell you that much. Never! HAH!

First and foremost, we’ve stepped up our act in this WritingUp gig. Yes sir. Brand new sit-choo. What am I talking about? It’s called the Gonzo Letters. It’s primarily for that particular international consortium of miscreants and ne’er-do-wells known throughout the blogging world –so, everywhere- as the Gonzo Warriors, but I think anybody can play. Because it’s so easy. And fun!

I know what yer sayin.’ Yer sayin’ "Oooh, but what is it Sensey? Why, I do declare I can hardly breathe until I fahnd out!” Well hold onto yer goodies, Petunia, cuz Ol’ Sensey’s gonna lay it out to you! It’s called ‘the Gonzo Letters,’ and it’s already started.

The idea came to me whilst taking a gut-shuddering dump and reading a copy of HST’s 'Fear and Loathing in America.' Many of my greatest ideas come to me in that way, in the biffy with my pants around my ankles, perhaps even whistling a tune and then PLOP, an ideer, just like that. You know what I’m talking about. Anyways…

The Gonzo Letters. The deal is this: Hunter’s style of covering the story was becoming part of the story himself. Many of his books are actually just compendiums of correspondence between him and anybody that crossed his path of interest, political or no. And the consortium, sublime as it was with his wild ramblings is made all the moreso with the scope and range of folks he actually ended up corresponding with. Writers, politicians, celebs, you name it.

But what does that have to do with lil’ ol’ me, Mister Sensey?” you ask, and rightfully so. Answer?

I say we initiate a correspondence of our own. To all sorts of folks. Think about it: We all come in here and write blogs about this, that and the other. We think this person or situation is particularly great, this person or situation is particularly awful etc and whatnot and whatever. Let’s fire these likes, dislikes, Hopes and Fears off to the Real World itself, to those folks that the stories are about and by doing so become a part of the story itself. That friends, is Pure Gonzo. In it’s Rawest.

And collect them form letter responses! And post ‘em on yer blog! That’s GOLD! SO often these form letters show how little people or corporations (hmmm, start writing letters to companies. I like it. A lot. Hmmmmmm) care about letters from the public.

I’ve begun. My first letter was to the cop that pulled over Willie Nelson’s tourbus and busted him for dope. And mushrooms, it seems. My next letter was to to Willie himself, offering my support and an honorary position in the Warriors. I don’t know if either camps will ever respond but I laughed my ass off at sending that Nelson letter and am still laughing as we speak. And I MEANT EVERY WORD I SAID.

KeyWoman1’s doing it. She fired off a very clear, concise and intelligent letter to The New York Times, The New York Daily News and The New York Post about marijuana legalization. Fired it off to the papers then cut and pasted into her blog. Will they ever print it? Who knows? But if you never step up to the plate how you ever gonna hit a home run? Or taste champagne? Or get a blowjob?

I see Quiddity doing it also. She wrote a letter to Alberto Salazar, her roach of a congressman, expressing how she felt about the dude voting in favour of American Torture and then told him what she thought about him extending the term Terrorists to protesters, given his vote of the previous day. She fired the letter to the good congressman and then cut and pasted the letter into her blog. Piece o’ cake, easy as pie. Cake and pie. And chicken! Right!

Seems Johnny Canuck is hip to this vibe as well. He wrote a steaming evisceration of the Pope for his advising Canada's government on how it sould run the country. Johnny told him where to go and how to get there and is firing it off to the Vatican as we speak. To what end? Who knows, but I think we can all agree, to something.

There are others. There is more. There is you. Who do you think deserves a Gonzo Letter? Try not to threaten or get yourself sued, that’s my advice, and I like to use a wide variety of ever-shifting pseudonyms. But do what you like. Have fun. Will intro it in this space, if you like, just gimme a heads up.

As always, I assume responsibility for Nothing. And get a shave, would you? Jesus.

Then we lash the whole fucking thing together and try to get it edited and just maybe published. See that coming? Why not? Am I nuts? Probably! Definitely! But I find if you smile and nod a lot, NOBODY CARES! Right?!?

Right.

All for now,

-General iSenseChange of the Gonzo Warriors

p.p. Everybody, it seems, has an email. Willie had one! I betcha all sorts of Radical Repubbies have ‘em too. It’s hip these days. Make use of it. Send ‘em something. But always remember: keep yerself out of the clink, good Christ, especially now. Right. As you were!

p.p. What about a Gonzo Warriors space at blogger.com or MySpace or whatever. A groupspace? An ideer, anywho.

RandomMP3age: “Hey You,” Pink Floyd

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