robot-alert!

The best writer in the USA has apparently killed himself with a gun. He invented Gonzo Journalism. He wrote Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, probably the book that has most influenced me. A proud member of the NRA for most of his life. Edward Gorey was the other American writer I really liked, he's dead now too.

It was in the heat of deadline that gonzo journalism was born while he was writing a story about the Kentucky Derby for Scanlan's magazine, he recounted years later in an interview in Playboy magazine.

"I'd blown my mind, couldn't work," he told Playboy. "So finally I just started jerking pages out of my notebook and numbering them and sending them to the printer. I was sure it was the last article I was ever going to do for anybody."

Instead, he said, the story drew raves and he was inundated with letters and phone calls from people calling it "a breakthrough in journalism," an experience he likened to "falling down an elevator shaft and landing in a pool of mermaids."

Link to AP obituary. link

From the Washington Post...

America's largest brewing company, Anheuser-Busch, released its latest product last week -- a beer that contains caffeine.

Obviously, this is a monumental cultural milestone and it raises important questions that we as a society must answer. For instance: Is adding America's favorite stimulant to America's favorite alcoholic beverage the greatest scientific breakthrough of the 21st century? Or the beginning of the end of civilization as we know it? Or what?

The beer is called B{+E} -- with the E raised up, like an exponent in math, which is why the name is pronounced "B to the E." (The B stands for Budweiser. The E stands for extra.) Sold in 10-ounce cans, B{+E} contains 54 milligrams of caffeine -- about half the dose found in an average cup of coffee. B{+E} also contains ginseng, the fabled herb, and guarana, an Amazonian berry frequently found in Brazilian soft drinks.

"It's beer with something extra," says Dawn Roepke, Anheuser-Busch's brand manager for new products. "It's new, it's innovative, it's different."

Actually, it's not all that new, innovative or different. The popularity of a cocktail made by adding vodka to the energy drink Red Bull has inspired several brewers to create caffeinated beers. Most are small local brews such as Moonshot, a Boston-based beer that contains caffeine, and Third Rail, a caffeinated beer brewed in Frederick but available only in California. But one is nationally known: Sparks, a malt-based energy drink that contains many of the same ingredients as B{+E} -- alcohol, caffeine, ginseng and guarana.

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