Loved the way the guy wrote. Great cynicism and wit mixed with brutal humor.
I use to attend meetings in Aspen every Spring. A bunch of us would hang out at a bar he was known to frequent. Sadly, we never had the pleasure of running into him.
Jim Cavanaugh
"Only those who attempt the absurd achieve the impossible"
Posts: 435 | Location: Buffalo, NY | Registered: January 19, 2005
A postive drug story.<br />"Today a young man on acid realized that all matter is merely energy condensed to slow vibration and that we are all one consciousness experiencing itself subjectively. There's no such thing has death, life is only a dream and you are the imagination of yourself.' Bill Hicks
Posts: 93 | Location: Terre Haute. IN | Registered: May 02, 2002
The world Julian wanted to preserve and restore is gone...the barbarians are at the gate. Yet when they breach the wall, they will find nothing of value to seize, only empty relics. The spirit of what we were has fled.
-Gore Vidal, "Julian"
Posts: 522 | Location: St. Albans, WV | Registered: February 03, 2004
Colby Buzzell style of writing is very Thompsonesque. Most of his war blog was deleted. His book will be a best seller. The Iraq war stories are gripping.
Most of this soldier's blog was taken down several months ago. His chain of command objected to the blog, although they all loved the stories.
Security violations are rare, says Spc. Buzzell's top commander, Brig. Gen. Carter Ham. "The commander does have a responsibility to ensure no inappropriate information is released," Gen. Ham says in an e-mail, noting that among the 8,000 men under him, only Spc. Buzzell has come under scrutiny. "While [operational security] is a very real everyday concern for us, I do not see potential violations as widespread," he says. Spc. Buzzell's blog, riddled with misspellings and larded with obscenities, conveys the kind of raw honesty that prompts military mothers to write weepy e-mails by the score. Soldiers have told Spc. Buzzell they sometimes strip out the curse words and send his writings home as their own. He credits as his inspiration the author Hunter S. Thompson, whose first-person articles and books about politics and drug use were popular in the 1970s. But My War probably is more reminiscent of Michael Herr's "Dispatches," a bleak, first-person account of the Vietnam War widely regarded as one of the best examples of military journalism. Mr. Herr's book took years to arrive on the mass market, but Spc. Buzzell's accounts offer near-instantaneous immediacy. And as his case demonstrates, a casual detail -- that his unit had run low on water during a maneuver, for instance -- can easily get a soldier into trouble. The blog entry at the root of Spc. Buzzell's difficulties was an Aug. 4 piece called "Men in Black." Opening with a bland, four-paragraph squib about a Mosul firefight that he snatched from CNN's Web site, Spc. Buzzell spins a riveting account of a nasty, hours-long firefight with scores of black-clad snipers. It begins with an enemy mortar attack and a testosterone-driven scramble to arms. "People were hooting and hollering, yelling their war cries and doing the Indian yell thing as they drove off and locked and loaded their weapons," he writes. He describes a harrowing ambush. "Bullets were pinging off our armor all over our vehicle, and you could hear multiple RPG's [rocket-propelled grenades] being fired and flying through the air and impacting all around us," he writes. "I've never felt fear like this. I was like, this is it, I'm going to die." Spc. Buzzell's account caught the attention of the News Tribune in Tacoma, Wash., the newspaper that covers Spc. Buzzell's home base of Fort Lewis. Noting that the attack got scant coverage by bigger media, the local paper drew heavily from Spc. Buzzell's anonymous account. The Pentagon's internal clip service picked up the News Tribune story and it landed in the hands of commanders in Iraq. Within hours, Lt. Col. Buck James, the battalion commander, ordered Spc. Buzzell to his office. Spc. Buzzell quickly shaved and grabbed fresh fatigues to see the colonel he had never met. As he later recounted on his blog, he arrived to find Col. James leafing through a massive printout of his Web writings, which someone had marked up with a yellow pen. The colonel, whom Spc. Buzzell described as a cross between George Patton and Vince Lombardi, opened with a question: " 'Youre [sic] a big Hunter S Thompson Fan, arnt [sic] you?'" Spc. Buzzell says he was called to account for two details: the observation that his unit ran low on water during the hours-long standoff and a description of the steps he took to get more ammunition as the firefight waxed on. Both were excised from his online archives. In an e-mail exchange, Col. James says the Army was concerned about a possible security breach on Spc. Buzzell's blog, but had no desire to muzzle him. "I counseled SPC Buzzell along with his Platoon Sergeant on these points and ensured that he understood that anything he was unsure about should be reviewed by his chain of command," Col. James says. Spc. Buzzell has "performed gallantly" as a soldier, he says. But Spc. Buzzell's trouble with the command continued. A few days later, after leaving a mocking message on his blog to the military intelligence officers he now assumed were reading along, Spc. Buzzell was ordered confined to camp. He was returned to regular duty and posted a few more times, but he recently removed all of his archives from the site, and new postings are now sporadic. He says it just isn't as fun to write, now that he has to submit everything to his platoon sergeant prior to publication. "I was never edited before," he says. "Now I am." Spc. Buzzell said he hasn't decided whether to permanently stop posting. He says he received scores of e-mails when "My War" went silent and even got some subtle nudges from his command to continue. Indeed, Col. James seems nostalgic for Internet accounts of his men. "To be candid, I believe the widespread popularity of his writing came as a bit of a shock to him and he was uncomfortable with the attention," Col. James said in an e-mail. "Personally, I think he is a talented writer and a gifted storyteller and should pursue his talent."
It was somewhere near Barstow, on the edge of the desert, when the drugs began to take hold...
If you haven't read anything by HST try Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. A good buzz is helpfull, but optional.
Bill
"There is no recession, my friends, no downturn, no hard times. The rich are wallowing in loot-and now they wanna make sure you don't come a-lookin' for your piece of the pie"...Michael Moore
Posts: 1292 | Location: boston ma | Registered: October 27, 2002
Found out this afternoon on an elevator news scroll...a Thompsonesque way to receive bad news...truly saddened...I have titled many things "Fear and Loathing in ..." in the investment articles I write as a homage (and occasional parody) of HST...didn't pay any royalties, figured he would understand. Damn, I am getting old! First KK, then HST, next will be PJ.
The risk of kicking butt is you get some crap on your shoe
HST was among my favorites as well...I even attemped to meet him once on a chance visit to the Woody Creek Tavern when I was in Aspen years ago. I was shocked to hear the news...but I think it was some kind of accident and not a suicide. Res ipsa loquitor.
RIP HST. I'm sure the reunion with his 300 lb. Samoan lawyer will be one for the ages in the afterlife...
I'm heartless???...I just think going out that way is cruel to your family....especially if kids are involved. If you liked him as an author, fine, no problem...my comment was only regarding his method of solving his problems.
Sorry for being kinda harsh, but your not the 1st to say that sort of comment to me. There is no way to know what drove someone to do it; I do agree in that one should not take thier own life but I cant - nor can anyone else - know what he was going through.
~Listen, here's the thing. If you can't spot the sucker in the first half hour at the table, then you ARE the sucker.
C.L.A.S.P. #0006 ~
Posts: 234 | Location: Winter Park, FL | Registered: September 05, 2003
I read something today that said he was either in ill health or expected to be in bad health in the future and did not want to put himself or family through the expense and all. This can present an ambivilant (sp) situtation...one shouldn't have to spent everything they've worked for all their life during the last year or two of that life and then leave nothing.
I read something today that said he was either in ill health or expected to be in bad health in the future and did not want to put himself or family through the expense and all. This can present an ambivilant (sp) situtation...one shouldn't have to spent everything they've worked for all their life during the last year or two of that life and then leave nothing.
(Speaking for myself...the one problem with the internet is that it is easy to write and send something in the heat of the moment...without giving alot of thought before doing so..mea culpa!)
Real nice, He was on the cell phone with his wife when he did it.
Class act.
F.P.N # 2 FSN# 840 "A good friend will come and bail you out of jail...but, a true friend will be sitting next to you saying, "Damn...that was fun!" ----------------------------------- Warning! Do not cut your cigars down, it may cause Damage. That is all. ----------------------------------- I refuse to tip toe through life only to arrive safely at death. ----------------------------------- "F*&K the G ride, i want the machines that are making them" __________________________ A Society of sheep begets a goverment of Wolves.
Posts: 1798 | Location: Hollywood, CA USA | Registered: September 16, 2003
