Fun_People Archive
28 Feb
Words Of Advice for Young People

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From: Peter Langston <psl>
Date: Fri, 28 Feb 97 15:03:00 -0800
To: Fun_People
Subject: Words Of Advice for Young People

Forwarded-by: Keith Bostic <bostic@bostic.com>
Forwarded-by: Chris Small <chris@eecs.harvard.edu>
From: a recording of William S. Burroughs:

Meanwhile, life goes on...

I am sometimes asked if I have any words of advice for young people. Well,
here are a few simple admonitions for young and old, man and beast.

Never interfere in a boy and girl fight.

Beware of whores who say they don't want money. The hell they don't. What
they mean is that they want *more* money; much more, these are the most
expensive whores what can be got.

Ahem.

If you're doing business with a religious son of a bitch, get it in
writing; his word isn't worth shit, not with the good lord telling him
how to fuck you on the deal.

If, after having been exposed to someone's presence, you feel as if you've
lost a quart of plasma, avoid that presence. You need it like you need
pernicious anemia.

We don't like to hear the word "vampire" around here; we're trying to
improve our public image. Building a kindly, avuncular, benevolent image;
"interdependence" is the keyword -- "enlightened interdependence".

Life in all its rich variety, take a little, leave a little. However, by
the inexorable logistics of the vampiric process they always take more
than they leave -- and why, indeed, should they take any?

Avoid fuck-ups. Fools, I call them. You all know the type -- no matter
how good it sounds, everything they have anything to do with turns into
a disaster. Trouble for themselves and everyone connected with them. A
fool is bad news, and it rubs off -- don't let it rub off on you.

Do not proffer sympathy to the mentally ill; it is a bottomless pit. Tell
them firmly, "I am not paid to listen to this drivel -- you are a terminal
fool!" Otherwise, they make you as crazy as they are.

Above all, avoid confirmed criminals. They are a special malignant strain
of fool.

Kim, like the great Gatsby, Kim believes in the green night, the orgiastic
future -- he believes in a magical universe of unpredictable spontaneous,
alive -- a universe where anything is possible. A universe of many gods,
often in conflict, so the paradox of an all-knowing, all-powerful god,
who nonetheless permits suffering, evil, and death does not arise. "We've
got a famine here, Osiris -- what happened?" "Well, you can't win them
all, I'm hustling myself." "Can you give us immortality?" "I can give you
an extension, maybe, take you as far as the first checkpoint -- you'll
have to make it from there on your own. Most of them don't, figure about
one in a million, and biologically speaking, that's very good odds."

© 1997 Peter Langston