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Some of them write that the events are not sequential! It’s hard enough to read a book with Wednesday followed by Monday. q: You take pride in being from Indiana, in being a Hoosier. vonnegut: For being from the state that gave us Eugene Debs. Eugene Debs said (and this is merely a paraphrase of the Sermon on the Mount, which is what so much socialist writing is), “As long as there’s a lower class, I’m in it; as long as there’s a criminal element, I’m of it; as long as there is a soul in prison,” which would include Timothy McVeigh, “I am not free.” What is wrong with that? Of course, Jesus got cruciWed for saying the same thing. q: With two million souls in prison today in the United States, Debs would be very busy. vonnegut: Debs would’ve committed suicide, feeling there was nothing he could do about it. Incidentally, I am honorary president of the American Humanist Association. John Updike, who is religious, says I talk more about God than any seminarian. Socialism is, in fact, a form of Christianity, people wishing to imitate Christ. q: Christianity pervades your spirit. vonnegut: Well, of course. It’s good writing. I don’t care whether it’s God or not, but the Sermon on the Mount is a masterpiece, and so is the Lord’s Prayer: “Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.” The two most radical ideas, inserted in the midst of conventional human thought, are E=MC2 — matter and energy are the same kind of stu¤—and, “Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.” Crack Kills, Pot Giggles Will Durst august 2003 Straight o¤, I got to tell you, I don’t smoke pot. Used to. Used to deal it. Bad Midwestern weed. Indiana gold. $95 a pound. We’d roll skinny little toothpick joints and smoke all day long. Right around 8:00 at night, we’d start to wonder, “Hey, am I actually getting high?” The answer, of course, was no, we had just spent the entire day hyperventilating. I quit smoking around 1978 when the heathen devil weed got too good. But you know what? I miss it. Not for the high. For all the wrong reasons. I miss rolling a joint one-handed while driving. I miss being illegal. I miss being a rebel. But it seems the U.S. government is determined to maintain that rebel status for its estimated 80 million pot smokers. You wouldn’t be accused of being one toke over the line if, after U.S. District Judge Charles Breyer refused to sentence Ed Rosenthal on federal charges of growing more than 100 plants, you assumed it was a victory for the pro-pot movement. Durst / Crack Kills, Pot Giggles 347 But if you think this action will cause the Bush Administration to slow down its feverish crackdown on medical marijuana, you might want to hold o¤ on investing all your money in rolling paper manufacturers. Richard Meyer, spokesman for the San Francisco division of the DEA, said, “The so-called medical marijuana initiative was a smokescreen: The real agenda of these people was to legalize not only marijuana but all drugs.” Can you believe these guys? A third-grader can tell you that crack is to pot as an Uzi is to a banana. Crack kills, pot giggles. Say you do run into a crazed pothead, what’s the worst thing that’s going to happen? You might get Xeas, that’s about it. OK, there’s Twinkie creme on your shirt, wipe it o¤. —Will Durst, stand-up comedian and political satirist, is the author of The All-American Sport of Bipartisan Bashing. An Interview with Tom Morello, Musician Elizabeth DiNovella january 2004 q: When did you Wrst learn guitar? tom morello: I started kind of late, when I was seventeen. I got the Sex Pistols record, and had the punk rock epiphany of “I can do this, too.” Prior to that, I was a big fan of heavy metal music, which involved extravagance. You had to have huge walls of Marshall ampliWers and expensive shiny Gibson, Les Paul guitars. You had to know how to play “Stairway to Heaven” and have a castle on a Scottish loch, limos, groupies, and things like that. All I had was a basement in Illinois. None of that was going to come...

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