David Foster Wallace - Dead.

He hanged himself on Friday night. He was 46 years old. This is a terrible thing.

Most people don't know who David Foster Wallace is. He's not as household a name as other, more mainstream literary authors. But now he will be included on a list, a very exclusive list where people who were too sensitive for life and those too selfish to allow other people to co-opt and enjoy it reside.

It's a list full of great, sad people, people wonderfully inept at life. I think we're all bad at life, for the most part, but most of us are gracious enough to let it drag on and on, just to see what comes next. These people have too much distaste for life to let it continue on toward its logical - or illogical, depending on how you look at it - conclusion.

And we are also angry at times like this because the person in question cannot be reprimanded for his ineptitude. We can't say, Goddamnit, we're all going through this thing, too. You can't just pick out a spot and then get off the train, jackass. It's not as if this person has made a bad decision. He/she has done something beyond reproach, and, being human and alive, we naturally hate it.

If one in a similar situation were to go into treatment, he/she could be ridiculed, or thanked. But not now. There is no amount of disdain or congratulatory rhetoric that is going to make this person do anything. At all. Ever. Again.

I've never made it through his most well-know behemoth of a novel, Infinite Jest, a sprawling thousand page nonlinear work of fiction. I now intend to, because he's dead. Isn't that the way it works with art? We can't really appreciate something until someone's dead? Is that the secret of appreciation?

Now that Wallace is dead, we must cling to the words he's already written, in lieu of the ones he wasn't able to get down on paper, in a laptop window, etc.

Below is an extremely funny reading he does at (I can't remember where) but it's really great and funny and I hope you enjoy it.

'Death Magnetic' Review Coming This Weekend

Newt Gingrich is Such A Slimy Lizard Douche

If you've ever seen How I Met Your Mother, then you probably remember the New Year's Eve episode ('The Limo'), in which Barney brings along a 'Get Psyched' Mix featuring a Bon Jovi song. The song gets played about a dozen times during the episode, and you feel yourself get very, very, very tired of hearing it by the end.

Similarly, Newt Gingrich, a former Speaker of the House (and current water-carrier for the Republican Party), used a couple GOP 'Get Psyched' phrases to describe the questions Sarah Palin got asked last night.

And, I've got to tell you, I'm so sick and tired of hearing those same fucking songs, I'm ready to jam knitting needles in my ears.

Here's the tete-a-tete between ABC's Charlie Gibson and Palin:

GIBSON: You said recently, in your old church, "Our national leaders are sending U.S. soldiers on a task that is from God." Are we fighting a holy war?
PALIN: You know, I don't know if that was my exact quote.
GIBSON: Exact words.
PALIN: But the reference there is a repeat of Abraham Lincoln's words when he said -- first, he suggested never presume to know what God's will is, and I would never presume to know God's will or to speak God's words.

And Newt's response:

On Fox, Newt Gingrich called this "a sad commentary on the growing anti-religious hostility of the news media." I would call it asking the governor about her own words.

Fuck.

Look over there, America! Go ahead, look! No, no, no, the problem has nothing to do with the tack of the candidates. It's about media bias. Come on, good ole US of A. Don't you know that we really start flinging the shit when somebody 'insults' a religious conviction? Typical liberal media bias.

Is it too much to ask to give up this Christian Conservative nonsense for a single election cycle? With a candidate who would probably rather be shipped back to Hanoi than discuss his religious beliefs in public, I thought we'd get that.

But no. Alas comes the pale horse, and on it the AntiChrist. Seriously, since when did questioning a braindead politician's religious vomit ever elicit a 'controversy'?

Here's my logic:

She said it.
It's stupid.
She should be questioned about it.

If the Iraq War was a mission from God, then he must be fucking pissed. I would be, if somebody fucked something up this bad in my name.

It just goes to show, you put lipstick on a pig, and it's still a mindless zombie archconservative in a skirt.

Still as true now as it was then.

Harsh, Dude!

I'm not going to apologize for being so annoyingly political in my posts the last week or so, but I'm really not that angry most of the time. Okay, I feel better.

But, here's something else to think about:

In this strange new pro-woman tableau, feminism -- a word that is being used all over the country with regard to Palin's potential power -- means voting for someone who would limit reproductive control, access to healthcare and funding for places like Covenant House Alaska, an organization that helps unwed teen mothers. It means cheering someone who allowed women to be charged for their rape kits while she was mayor of Wasilla, who supports the teaching of creationism alongside evolution, who has inquired locally about the possibility of using her position to ban children's books from the public library, who does not support the teaching of sex education.

Here's the new 'Tallica video.

Sarah Palin's Use of Prayer

"And pray about that also. I think God's Will has to be done in unifying people and companies to get that gas line built, so pray for that."



It came out today that Sarah Palin didn't demand books to be removed from libraries, but that she asked what the local libraries would think of having certain books removed, a fact that's made every warm body in the union breathe a sigh of relief.

I think it makes her worse, honestly. What if, on her first day, she'd asked, "Hey, what would you God-fearing people think if I started using the word nigger around here? I'm just trying to get to know you and everything and wanted to gage your sensibilities."

(Hopefully) they would have kicked her ass. The worst thing is, nobody's called her on it. She's got the religious nuts drooling all over their fucking hymnals, the gun-nuts cornholing their modified assault rifles, and the media hasn't said one word about any of it. Goddamnit.

Goose-stepping morons like yourself should try reading books instead of burning them

"While on the subject of burning books, I want to congratulate librarians, not famous for their physical strength, who, all over this country, have staunchly resisted anti-democratic bullies who have tried to remove certain books from their shelves, and destroyed records rather than have to reveal to thought police the names of persons who have checked out those titles. So the America I loved still exists, if not in the White House, the Supreme Court, the Senate, the House of Representatives, or the media. The America I loved still exists at the front desks of our public libraries."
~ Kurt Vonnegut

Until today it was not apparent that Sarah Palin was willing to use her stilettos to trample all over 1st Amendment Rights.

A lot of things I can forgive. I stand on the opposite side of her on abortion, but that's not even a real issue to me. Other things matter much more to the country, in my opinion. Taking 27 million dollars in earmarks for a town that has 9,000 people, for instance, sounds like something the Straight Talk Express should delve into, at least internally.

I don't necessarily believe ANY state should secede from the Union, but I can even shrug at that. Hell, I'm even pro-gun.

But the issue of book banning touches right at the little black scar where my heart should be. Apparently, Sarah Palin tried to have books banned at a local library. She asked 'how one goes about banning books'.

How dare you, Sarah Palin, try to tell the government to get off people's backs and then mandate what they should be able to read and enjoy. The first step in creating an authoritarian rule in any country is to convince them that books are bad and should be censored for the better sake of your darling little do-nothing children's minds.

I have every right to read whatever I want, even if it talks about fucking, sucking, felching, fighting, or murdering. If you don't like it, don't read it. You don't have a monopoly on moral values.

And just because I can as an American:
Shit piss fuck cunt cocksucker motherfucker tits.