Current mood:

sad

Hunter's gone...
So Hunter S. Thompson killed himself yesterday. He put a large caliber bullet through his temple while his wife was away at the grocery store. It was some time in the morning at his remote compound in the Rocky Mountains near Aspen, Colorado.

This, for complete lack of a more succinct word, sucks.

But of course, as some of his local cronies from the Woody Creek Tavern would have you believe, Hunter's never been the kind of cat who would pass gently into that dark night. No, he would go VIOLENTLY, or not at all. And maybe in that manic, mixed-up, grain alcohol soaked mind of his, he finally surrendered to the fact that he just might not die during one of his self-destructive (not to mention hotel room destructive) adventures. In fact, his adventuring days were over, and long ago at that. He’d settled into a wealthy hermitage there in the mountains, only rarely appearing in public and never for any extended stay. He was safe at home. With his guns.I’ve a hunch that things finally crystallized in his mind regarding his largely dreary future. His failing health. Wheelchairs. IV’s. weakness and waste and slow, undignified, death. Perhaps he remembered Johnny Cash. Or maybe Bob Hope, although I’m almost sure he loathed the man. Perhaps he looked back on his long, weird, and fully-seized life and thought, “Why should I die any differently than I lived?’

And I, as much as I love the man and the work he did, cannot find much fault in that reasoning.