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The Edge (by Hunter S. Thompson)

The Hell's Angels by Hunter S. Thompson | 1966 | Hunter S. Thompson

Posted on by Chuckster

The Edge By Hunter S. Thompson

The lever goes up into fourth, and now theres no sound except the wind. Screw it all the way over, reach through the handlebars to raise the headlight beam. The needle leans down on a hundred and wind burned eyeballs strain to see down the center line, trying to provide a margin for the reflexes.

But with the throttle screwed on there is only the barest margin, and no room at all for mistakes. It has to be done right and thats when the strange music starts, when you stretch your luck so far that fear becomes exhilaration and vibrates along your arms. You can barely see at a hundred; the tears flow back so fast that they vaporize before they get to your ears. The only sounds are the wind and a dull roar floating back from the mufflers. You watch the white line and try to lean with it howling through a turn to the right, then to the left and down the long hill to Pacifica letting off now, but only until the next dark stretch and another few seconds on the edge The Edge .There is no honest way to explain it because the only people who really know where it is are the ones who have gone over. The others--the livingare those who pushed their control as far as they felt they could handle it, and then pulled back, or slowed down, or did whatever they had to when it came time to choose between Now and Later.



TOPICS:

Culture/Society

Miscellaneous

News/Current Events

KEYWORDS:

crazy

huntersthompson

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Hunter S. Thompson had a profound influence on my early life. I graduated from High School and enlisted in the Army the year this was published and, while I don't agree with his politics or everything he wrote in later lears, I will miss him.



To: Chuckster; RepublicanReptile

Thanks for the post. When he was good, he was very, very good.





by 2 posted onby JennysCool (I was so naive as a kid I used to sneak behind the barn and do nothing. -Johnny Carson)

To: Chuckster

He killed himself on my birthday. My husband knew last night and didn't tell me about it - because he knew I would be bummed. Thompson was one twisted ,freakish cat. ... and I am sad to see what happened to him. Hubby and I were discussing this a bit ago.. and he said "you know there was probably something wrong with him".. and we both paused and LOL... I said "of course there was something wrong with him".., "no", he said ,"he was a life time smoker.. who knows what the Docs have told him"..... Yeah.. who knows?



To: Chuckster

"We had two bags of grass, seventy-five pellets of mescaline, five sheets of high-powered blotter acid, a salt shaker half-full of cocaine and a whole galaxy of multicolored uppers, downers, screamers, laughers... also a quart of tequila, a quart of rum, a case of Budweiser, a pint of raw ether, and two dozen amyls. But the only thing that worried me was the ether. There is nothing more irresponsible and depraved than a man in the depths of an ether binge."

---Hunter S. Thompson





The Man had a way with words



To: Chuckster

Ignore the nightmare in the bathroom.

Just another ugly refugee from the

Love Generation, some doom struck gimp

who couldn't handle the pressure.

My attorney had never been able to

accept the notion -- often espoused

by former drug abusers -- that you

can get a lot higher without drugs

than with them. And neither have

I, for that matter.



HST





To: Chuckster



GoodbyeHunter

Well, i'll post the link to my blog article that I wrote last night at 4am here too.

by 6 posted onby RepublicanReptile ('Open your mind, close the Border")

To: Chuckster

I've read about every book that Thompson wrote. I rolled with laughter when he and Steadman were going to spray paint "F??? the Pope" on the English America's Cup entry in Rhode Island before Idiot Child lost the cup to Australia.



I have no respect for Thompson at this moment. His life couldn't have been so bad that it warranted blowing his head off. The coward's way out.



by 7 posted onby montomike (Gay means happy and carefree...not an abomination against nature's check valve.)

To: Diva Betsy Ross

Once in a great while he could string a couple funny paragraphs together. I read Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas and some other book I can't recall. As far as I can remember, he never put to paper an original thought that struck me as interesting. My strongest memory of his work was how he and that other a$$hole treated the young girl in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. The man was a pig. The effort that plants and trees exerted in creating oxygen for him was wasted. Good riddance.



by 8 posted onby Psycho_Bunny (I know a great deal about the Middle East because Ive been raising Arabian horses" Patrick Swazey)

To: Psycho_Bunny





by 9 posted onby evets (God bless president George W. Bush)

To: Psycho_Bunny

that could be because he was talkin over your head?!?!



To: Psycho_Bunny

You are exactly right.



by 11 posted onby KC_Conspirator (This space outsourced to India)

To: Diva Betsy Ross

Nope



by 12 posted onby Psycho_Bunny (I know a great deal about the Middle East because Ive been raising Arabian horses" Patrick Swazey)

To: Psycho_Bunny

fraid so...



To: Diva Betsy Ross





frayed knot

by 14 posted onby evets (God bless president George W. Bush)

To: Chuckster

Me too...he was ONE wild cat!



by 15 posted onby antivenom (If your not living on the edge, you're taking up too much damn space!!!)

To: evets

hehe. frayed sew



To: Chuckster

My first thought was that this was probably the least surprising suicide I've ever heard of.



It was never a matter of if with this guy, only when



To: trumandogz

Just try being strapped down to an operating table and anesthetized with open drop ether some day. It's a truly hideous, totally memorable experience.



To: The Lumster

Wonder if he wrote a 'gonzo' suicide note.



by 19 posted onby evets (God bless president George W. Bush)

To: Diva Betsy Ross

So you like the way some drug-crazed liberal wrote. Big deal. I read and enjoy Plato but I don't slam on people when the inevitable negative comment pops up on the occasional Plato threads. There's no need for you to turn into a personal-attack twit just because someone doesn't love or respect the authors you do....(And I can guarantee you'd be singing a whole different tune had it been your daughter he'd pulled his crap with.) If you want to read someone who was truly brilliant and funny with the English language without being a drugged-up jerk, pick up PG Wodehouse's collection of short stories. Otherwise, stuff a hat in it: Hunter S Thompson didn't have near enough the brain power to talk over my head. And neither do you.



by 20 posted onby Psycho_Bunny (I know a great deal about the Middle East because Ive been raising Arabian horses" Patrick Swazey)

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