03 Sept 07

Two Tonys on Friedrich Nietzsche

Woman is unspeakably more wicked than man, also cleverer. Goodness in woman is really nothing but a form of degeneracy.

“What kind of shit is that! Is Nietzsche sayin’ women are tradin’ vaginas for rabbit meat 'cause they can’t go huntin’? That they’re layin’ in caves pregnant boilin’ up rabbit guts? Things have changed, brother. How’re you gonna tell me that Margaret Thatcher is weak? Look what she did to the Falklands. She sent her Limey sailors, and they pulverised the Argentinians - left ‘em floating in the South Atlantic Ocean.”

The thought of suicide is a great consolation: with the help of it, one has got through many a bad night.

“No question about it. I’ve been down and gloomy, and spent lonely nights in dark places after doin’ terrible things, and I’ve thought, ‘Man, if this happens, here’s what I’m gonna do.’ If I get cancer, am I gonna lay up in this cell, rottin’ away an inch at a time, with some quack Venezuelan DOC doctor tellin’ me to take two aspirins and kite him in the mornin’. Fuck that! There ain’t many motherfuckers on this planet whose minds haven’t thought about suicide.”

Without music life would be a mistake.

“I’ve got my Walkman and my new CL10 headphones. All music ain’t for me though. Don’t give me no country and western with some hillbilly whinin’ about how some granny got drunk and ran over him in a pickup truck. Don’t gimme no rap with egotistical ghetto stars singin’ about their bitches big booties, how much jewellery and money and dope they’ve got, and how they’re drivin’ around in Benzes with a bottle of Crystal in one hand and a crack pipe in the other. Gimme Schubert’s Ave Maria. Gimme Handel’s Messiah. Gimme Strauss’s Thunder and Lightning - anyone who doesn’t like that is a fuckin’ animal, sacrilegious. Nietzsche was right: life needs music.

The weak and defective shall perish.

“Should the little chunky Lebanese boy on a stretcher, full of shrapnel manufactured by Dubya and Rummy’s war contractor buddies be allowed to perish? I took my glasses off and got all teary-eyed when I saw that on CNN. Who in their right mind would follow what Nietzsche is sayin’ here other than that Nazi clique? And look what it got them: chompin’ down on cyanide caps.”

So long as the priest, that professional negator, slanderer and poisoner of life, is regarded as a superior type of human being, there cannot be any answer to the question: “What is truth?”

“When I turn on the TV set and see a fuckin’ ass-hole like Robert Schiller of the Cathedral of Tomorrow sittin’ there in his big glass palace in elaborate robes, takin’ people’s money, tellin’ his flock what is right and wrong, I see a high-class motherfuckin’ flimflammer, a snakeoil salesman. From Schiller to Billy Graham to the guy in Vatican City who used to ride with the Nazi Youth Group, they’re all fuckin’ scammers. They’re not interested in truth. They’re interested in de bizz-ness.”

Live dangerously. Build your cities on the slopes of Vesuvius.

“In the navy, I lived on the USS Vesuvius for three years, seven months, and ten days. Vesuvius is the volcano that destroyed Pompeii, Herculaneum and Stabiae. They found bodies of motherfuckers sat at tables and layin’ in bed who had died quickly 'cause a pyroclastic cloud swarmed their lungs. There’s somethin’ to be said for livin’ dangerously. And I’m not knockin’ employees of Wal-Mart, Sears or KFC. It’s not easy goin’ into a heavily armed hotel room at two in the mornin’ and blowin’ a guys face off, but it gives you a feelin’ of livin’ on the edge. Look at Pat Tillman the Arizona Cardinal, an NFL player, a college grad. He gave up a multi-million- dollar contract to join the army, went to Afghanistan to fight the Mujahideen, and got his ass blown off by friendly fire. Some say it was patriotism, but I say it was for fuckin’ excitement.”

It was subtle of God to learn Greek when he wished to become an author and not to learn it better.

“You’ve gotta be a stupid motherfucker to think God wrote the Bible. But for the motherfuckers with eighty-year sentences, comin’ through the prison gate, shattered motherfuckers – especially young one, the Bible gives 'em somethin’ to lean on. I don’t think for one second that Pope Benedict XV1 goes to bed believin’ God wrote the Bible or that the walls of Jericho tumbled down or that Moses turned the Nile into blood and had it rain frogs. Of course the Pope doesn’t believe that cos he’s in de bizz-nezz. The Bible’s a hormone-releasin’ remedy for the blues.”

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Copyright © 2006-2007 Shaun P. Attwood