HEADLINE: Bedtime for gonzo

BYLINE: Michael Heaton, Plain Dealer Reporter

BODY:


Singer-songwriter Jerry Jeff Walker defined gonzo journalism after long discussions with the late, great Hunter S. Thompson as "taking an unknown thing to an unknown place for a known purpose."

Gonzo also was known as getting screamingly high with whatever was available, as often as possible.

Which can be a lot of fun, if it does not go on indefinitely. Which it did for Thompson, and we all know how that party ended; Hunter took his own life last week. Partying like a college student really shouldn't continue much more than say, oh five or six years after graduation. Some people are better at it than others. People such as Thompson and Keith Richards, for example. But for mere mortals, the road to excess usually leads one of two places: jail or the morgue.

Which is why practitioners of gonzo journalism would do well to modify their behavior with the passage of time. If only for their own health. There are options. There are less self-destructive methods of journalism, such as:

• Garbanzo Journalism - People who write about the salad bars at restaurants.



• Fonzo Journalism - Writers who concentrate on the early acting career of Henry Winkler.



• Fresno Journalism - Writers who cover the San Joaquin Valley in California.



• Gorgonzo Journalism - Food writers who specialize in blue cheeses.



• Alonzo Journalism - Basketball writers who cover the Miami Heat.



• Bonzo Journalism - Film critics who only write about movies with monkeys in them.



• Quizno Journalism - This is the term for writers who like to eat submarine sandwiches while they write.

With the bread just lightly toasted.

:-)
Brought a smile to my face

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I love abandonware and everyone else should too.

(Glares through computer...to your SOUL!!!!)

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Bertrand Russell, in a lecture on logic, mentioned that in the sense of material implication, a false proposition implies any proposition. A student raised his hand and said "In that case, given that 1 = 0, prove that you are the Pope". Russell immediately replied, "Add 1 to both sides of the equation: then we have 2 = 1. The set containing just me and the Pope has 2 members. But 2 = 1, so it has only 1 member; therefore, I am the Pope."

The internet is full of interesting things.

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Rolling Stone magazine issue #970 is a special issue for Hunter S. Thompson. It is bursting with pages of pictures and information. Pick it up. Great issue.

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