Zo Gets Her Badge On

What the fork was I bitching about? There had been this badge up at Listics that took me forever to mouseover ... and when I did, whoa! Of course now it's long gone—I told you, I operate on, um, Icelandic time—but there's nothing easier than helping yourself, on a Mac. Just drag that sucker to the desktop, and it's mine mine mine. Unless of course FP has some kinda weird license on it. Copyright I get. That other stuff, no. As far as I can tell, that other thing plays to the conscience, which makes it just tighty-whitey liberal do-goodism. Not that I don't believe in the Good, or that it springs perpetually from the heart—I simply cannot stand anything that smacks of PBS.

So, after finally remembering what this thing was on my desktop—Frank! What greater honor, what higher accolade! I display proudly “The Good Blogkeeping Certification of Incivility!”


That Frank is ...is an old hippie. Is what he is. Not, of course, wholly unlike oneself.

Old not in years—well, maybe that too, depends on your perspective—but to have once been a hippie is to shed traces forever after of that far-away state of heart, of mind ... much as a distant star sheds a light visible only if you tilt your head a certain way.

Dear HST, you can still see the line where the wave broke, from Grizzly Peak. On good day you can see over the city and, way out to sea, all alone, the Farallons. The water is so bright. What I have always thought is that the wave never broke at all, but rose higher and higher til it curled over the San Francisco and fell into the Pacific, disappearing into the ocean again. So that, really, there was never any end. Not in me, not in Frank, or Annie ... not in a million other souls. The wave may grow smaller as it ripples outward in both the ocean and the dusty dimension of time, may seem to disappear ... but that is illusion, my dear Mr. T. You know as well as I, waves never die.

Of course, Hunter Thompson is dead. Largely because he never stopped playing that edge. To get jacked that high, daily, to write, to live in supreme coolness (what a burden, in itself)... an unsustainable method if ever there was one. Which became clear the moment any of us had kids. Although one of the saddest scenes I remember was coming across a campsite of utterly stoned parents ... and a band of puzzled, dirty children, who ran up to our car like beggars. Hi! Where you going? What's your name? When really, they were terribly lonely.

If I'm talking to HST again, there must be Gonzo about. Which is at least half hippie anyway—at least for those who had edge. In Berkeley, we had edge. Some of us still do. There's me ... there's Dave Winer ...

Edge as opposed to those drug-addled flower children in the Haight (present company excepted, Annie.)

So here you are, dear href Frank. My public thanks. I've never received an award for being a pain in the ass! (Unless you count my divorce decree.)

You're the best,
Zo