Fear and Loathing

An interesting item on the Very Short List today- a new movie on the life and times of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson will be released on July 4th. You can view the trailer at:

http://www.huntersthompsonmovie.com/

As a young person in the 1970's, I found Dr. Thompson to be truly inspirational...I read and re-read both Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas and Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail of '72 with great enthusiasm. He is near the top of my list of most enjoyable writers - along with Winston Churchill and H.L. Mencken. An odd group certainly - but all were masters of the English language in their own ways.

The movie trailer makes me feel old... And listening to Pat Buchanan make nice about him is vaguely surreal. Goddamn it...where's my Ibogaine...

"Hallucinations are bad enough. But after a while you learn to cope with things like seeing your dead grandmother crawling up your leg with a knife in her teeth. Most acid fanciers can handle this sort of thing. But nobody can handle that other trip—the possibility that any freak with $1.98 can walk into Circus-Circus and suddenly appear in the sky over downtown Las Vegas twelve times the size of God, howling anything that comes into his head. No, this is not a good town for psychedelic drugs. Reality itself is too twisted." Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas

In other news, it's been a fairly sedate week. All the elders gathered at my folks' on Sunday for Emilie's 83rd birthday bash...featuring meatloaf and chocolate cake. Monday was mow Emilie's yard and weed the flower beds day. Yesterday I cleaned the inside of my car - I believe for the first time since I bought it in 2003. It smells nice. I think I collected enough labrador, basset hound, and dachshund fur to stuff a small sofa.

On Monday afternoon I also went for a walk out by Dredge Lake in the hope of photographing tweety birds, beavers, wildflowers, and anything else that looked interesting. Eric had warned me about the mosquitos; but it was pretty breezy at my place and I thought that the bugs would not be a problem. When I got out of the car - it was dead calm. The little bloodsuckers lured me into the woods and then I was set-upon with a vengeance. I took about 30 pics and not one of them is usable. It's difficult to maintain one's focus when one is being sucked-dry by a swarm of blood-thirsty insects. Yesterday morning one eye was damn near swollen shut. And I'm still scratching...

So...you will have to be satisfied with a couple of previously taken wildflower pics:

Dodecatheon Pulchellum (Primrose Family) Shooting Star on Airport Dike Trail June 11, 2008

Epilobium Latifolium (Evening Primrose Family) River Beauty on Airport Dike Trail June 15, 2008. This flower is closely related to Fireweed; but has multiple stems and is much lower.

Potentilla Anserina (Rose Family) Silverweed on Airport Dike Trail June 11, 2008.

Lathyrus Maritimus (Pea Family) Beach Pea on Airport Dike Trail June 15, 2008. This is probably subspecies pubescens.