Lots of high weirdness in the 'press' this week, as the baby boomers are aging and coming clean about what they have done. For instance former French President Jacques Chirac was taken aback by George W Bush's religious reasoning for invading Iraq:
Now out of office, Chirac recounts that the American leader appealed to their “common faith” (Christianity) and told him: “Gog and Magog are at work in the Middle East…. The biblical prophecies are being fulfilled…. This confrontation is willed by God, who wants to use this conflict to erase his people’s enemies before a New Age begins.”
In other muderous crank news Paul Krassner, first publisher of Robert Anton Wilson writes about taking acid with 'Squeaky' Fromme, one of Charles Manson's most devoted followers who later attempted to assassinate then US president Gerald Ford and is soon to be released from prison.
Squeaky and I stared silently at each other for a while -- I recalled that Manson had written, "I never picked up anyone who had not already been discarded by society" -- and eventually my eyes began to tear. There were tears in Squeaky's eyes too. She asked me to try on Charlie's vest. It felt like a bizarre honor to participate in this family ceremony. The corduroy vest was a solid inch thick with embroidery -- snakes and dragons and devilish designs including human hair that had been woven into the multi-colored patterns.
But the strangest of recent boomer revelations comes from the eternally suprising freak-film director John Waters writing eloquently about his sincere support for one of Charles Manson's followers, who did kill someone, to be released on parole:
Leslie Van Houten always seemed the one that could have somehow ended up making movies with us instead of running with the killer dune-buggy crowd. She was pretty, out of her mind, rebellious, with fashion-daring, a good haircut, and a taste for LSD -- just like the girls in my movies. Instead of being a "good soldier" for Charlie and participating in the murders of Leno and Rosemary La Bianca, which she certainly believed was the right thing to do at the time, I wish she had been with us in Baltimore on location for Pink Flamingos the day Divine ate dog shit for real (our own cultural Tate/La Bianca).
As Hunter said, when the going gets weird, the weird turn pro.
...
Squeaky Photo by Dick Schmidt
Now out of office, Chirac recounts that the American leader appealed to their “common faith” (Christianity) and told him: “Gog and Magog are at work in the Middle East…. The biblical prophecies are being fulfilled…. This confrontation is willed by God, who wants to use this conflict to erase his people’s enemies before a New Age begins.”
In other muderous crank news Paul Krassner, first publisher of Robert Anton Wilson writes about taking acid with 'Squeaky' Fromme, one of Charles Manson's most devoted followers who later attempted to assassinate then US president Gerald Ford and is soon to be released from prison.
Squeaky and I stared silently at each other for a while -- I recalled that Manson had written, "I never picked up anyone who had not already been discarded by society" -- and eventually my eyes began to tear. There were tears in Squeaky's eyes too. She asked me to try on Charlie's vest. It felt like a bizarre honor to participate in this family ceremony. The corduroy vest was a solid inch thick with embroidery -- snakes and dragons and devilish designs including human hair that had been woven into the multi-colored patterns.
But the strangest of recent boomer revelations comes from the eternally suprising freak-film director John Waters writing eloquently about his sincere support for one of Charles Manson's followers, who did kill someone, to be released on parole:
Leslie Van Houten always seemed the one that could have somehow ended up making movies with us instead of running with the killer dune-buggy crowd. She was pretty, out of her mind, rebellious, with fashion-daring, a good haircut, and a taste for LSD -- just like the girls in my movies. Instead of being a "good soldier" for Charlie and participating in the murders of Leno and Rosemary La Bianca, which she certainly believed was the right thing to do at the time, I wish she had been with us in Baltimore on location for Pink Flamingos the day Divine ate dog shit for real (our own cultural Tate/La Bianca).
As Hunter said, when the going gets weird, the weird turn pro.
...
Squeaky Photo by Dick Schmidt
