“I met a fan in Kentucky who had throat cancer. He was only supposed to live a few weeks. For some reason, I reached out, grabbed his throat, and started praying for the dude. He lives long enough to give me [the certificate] on our next tour.”
And with the most Holy Gift of Healing delivered from on high, the ranks of that most august personage of men, the Kentucky Colonels, swells by one.
“It’s signed by the governor and says I’m an honorary Kentucky Colonel.”
The origins of Hunter Thompson’s 1966 book, Hell’s Angels: The Strange Terrible Saga of the Outlaw Motorcycle Gangs can be found in a 1965 article for The Nation magazine. The article entitled The Motorcycle Gangs: Losers and Outsiders prompted several book offers. Accepting a deal with Random House Thompson spent the next year living in close quarters with the Oakland and San Bernardino chapters of the Hell’s Angels, interviewing them extensively.
Interviewed here is an iconic member of the Oakland chapter, John Terrence Tracy a.k.a. Terry the Tramp. Thompson questions him about various run-ins with the law and other Hells Angles activities.
January 1942: 500 Wehrmacht soldiers found themselves surrounded by the Red Army on the Eastern Front. Suffering in temperatures of –22 Fahrenheit, marching through snowdrifts that at times reached waist high, soldiers began to lie down in the snow to die. Six hours into their escape they claimed they could go no further. Commanders made the decision to dispense Pervitin among the men. The unit doctor later wrote: “After half an hour, the men began spontaneously reporting that they felt better. They began marching in orderly fashion again, their spirits improved, and they became more alert.”
While drowning in the oceans of sickly sweet platitudes and musings on the 10 year anniversary of the September attacks I can’t help but remember the inane question asked time and again a decade back: “Why do they hate us?”. This was hardly a new question, nor the first generation to ask it. In 1953 during an NSC meeting President Eisenhower reportedly mentioned that "it was a matter of great distress to him that we seemed unable to get some of these down-trodden countries to like us instead of hating us." To be sure the answers are varied. Whether it be our support of Zionists, or the fact that we have made gunboat diplomacy a cornerstone in our foreign policy since the Barbary Wars and our invasion of Tripoli. Still in my mind there is a singular event that stands head above rest in deserving a hearty “fuck you forever” from the Muslim word to to the West: the cynical overthrow of the democratically elected government of Iran by the United States and Britain, to protect our hegemony over their oil reserves.
help you find your way back.
The Eve of the Krampus