Saturday, March 15, 2008

Stupid people and the impending massacre in Ballarat

My favourite author of all time is a bloked called Harlan Ellison. Your fuckin' uneducated fault for not knowing who he is. He's doing some interviews with people because there's a movie coming out about him. Knowing Australia we'll get the usual 5 second-crap press release rewrite, about 8 months after the fact - not unlike SBS TV news finding out that Terry Pratchett has dementia last night... like it was fuckin' news.... (can't even find the story on their website, that's how important they thought it was)

Anyhoo, I read this interview with Harlan on salon.com and I thought this particular quote resonated best, although sadly, it may mean the end of Ballarat as a heavily populated regional city if Harlan ever moves here:

"I'm an elitist because I think there are too many stupid people in the
world. But one must not pity them; one must take an AK-47 and kill them. You
just need to kill as many stupid people as you can find. Go out in the streets
and ask them if they have ever heard of Guy de Maupassant. No? Bam, you're dead.

Have you ever heard of Bessie Smith? No? Bam, you're dead. Beyond that, I
think it is really smartass of me to be cranky at people for not being as good
as I want them to be. I have, I suppose, a very peculiar love-hate relationship
with the human race. As a concept, the human race seems to be a very workable
idea. When you get down to the individuals, most of them need a ball-peen hammer
to the middle of their forehead to make them move even as a slow pony. I figure
any species that is capable of writing "Moby-Dick" and painting the Sistine
Chapel ceiling and putting people on the moon does not have to settle for novels
by Judith Krantz, McDonald's toad burgers and movies like "Dumb and Dumberer."

What is that Latin phrase? Spero melior -- I hope for better things. I have
a very low tolerance threshold. It's one of my many, many flaws and I get cranky
with people..."

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