I want to live alone in the desert
I want to be like Georgia O'Keefe
I want to live on the Upper East Side
And never go down in the street


unknown, roller coaster, glen echo park, Maryland, 1926

* Top ten conservative idiots. excerpt:

9. Roger Stone

"Tiniest Penis

"Meanwhile, Roger Stone - the famed GOP operative who was last featured on this list after he left obscene voice mails for Elliot Spitzer's 83-year-old father (see Idiots 305) - was back in the news last week with a new 527 organization intended 'to educate the American public about what Hillary Clinton really is.'

"The name of Stone's organization is Citizens United Not Timid. Get it? Here, allow me to spell it out for you. Citizens United Not Timid.

"Clever stuff, huh?

"Curiously, Stone continues to be invited to give his opinion on national television, which you have to admit is a little strange. I mean, how does that phone call go? 'Hi, Mr. Stone? Mr. Roger Stone? The guy who leaves obscene voice mails for the elderly and runs an organization that describes Hillary Clinton as a 'cunt?' Yes, do you have ten minutes to spare this afternoon for a bit of political analysis with Tucker Carlson?'

"Bizarre. But anyway, it seems that the conservative strategy for 2008 is pretty clear - black people who are deemed sufficiently unpatriotic by Bill O'Reilly should be lynched, and women are cunts. Sounds like a winning election year message to me!"


* Excerpts from Crystal Zevon's excellent oral history/bio of her ex-husband:
I'll Sleep When I'm Dead: The Dirty Life and Times of Warren Zevon:

On meeting Keith Richard in June 1992 (from Zevon's diary): "When [Waddy Wachtel] introducted me to Keith Richards, I said 'Maestro. What can I say?' And he hugged me. Keith was wonderful. Complimentary, very funny, modest. We sat together smoking & joking while [Waddy] and Steve Jordan worked up a comp. Keith said he was working on his 'vowel movements,' I said I wrote too many consonants, and he said 'I write the consonants last.'"

Zevon brought back to certain friends the advice Keith's father had on women: "Remember son...it's the second hole down the back of the neck."

Bruce Springsteen on meeting Zevon in the mid-1970s: "The first time I met Warren, he came to New York. I saw him in a club in the city, and my main recollection was he did a version of Muddy Waters' 'I Am a Man" and instead of spelling out M-A-N, he spelled out his own name, Warren -- which was very funny. It was one of those classic things that told you everything you needed to know about him."

"Warren was a bit of an unusual character coming out of California because his tone was not typical California unless you went back to maybe Nathanael West or something. He had the cynical edge, which was really not a part of what was coming out of California at the time. Outside of the songs being great, he was just an interesting character. My recollection is that after the show, we went out. I seem to remember spending most of the night and well into the morning of the next day together. We talked and hit it off."

* George Bush in his own words.

* "The world breaks everyone and afterward many are strong in the broken places. But those that will not break it kills. It kills the very good and the very gentle and the very brave impartially. If you are none of these you can be sure it will kill you too but there will be no special hurry." -- Ernest Hemingway