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Holidays in Hell by P J O'Rourke

By thescian on September 8, 2006.

Like most people who don't own Bermuda shorts, I'm bored by ordinary travel. See the Beautiful Grand Canyon. OK, I see it. OK, it's beautiful. Now what? And I have no use for vacation paradises. Take the little true love along to kick back and work on the relationship. She gets her tits sun-burned. I wreck the rental car. We've got our teeth in each other's throat before you can say 'lost luggage'. Nor do attractions attract me. If I had a chance to visit another planet, I wouldn't want to go to Six Flags Over Mars or ride through the artificial ammonia like in a silicone-bottomed boat at Venusian Cypress Gardens. I'd want to see the planet's principle features - what makes it tick. Well, the planet I've got a chance to visit is Earth, and Earth's principal features are chaos and war. I think I'd be a fool to spend years here and never have a look. - From Holidays in Hell by P J O'Rourke

I picked up this book yesterday at the local library and it's already got me reading right out of bed today morning. A look at the chaos of this stupid planet through the eyes of a extravagantly crazy american with a highly cultivated sense of irreverence. He is at times very insightful that amidst the laughter I had to actually stop and think. Consider this,

Earnestness is just stupidity sent to college. I'm not sure this book contains any serious content. No matter how serious the events I've witnessed. I've never noticed that being serious about them did anything to improve the fate of the people involved. Some writers, the young and the dim ones, think being near something important makes them important so they should act and sound important which will, somehow, make their audience important too. Then, as soon as everybody is filled with sufficient sense of importance, Something Will Be Done.

Oh, well.

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Thanks for the reminder. P. J. is a great writer, and I have followed him since his Rolling Stone magazine days. "All The Trouble In The World - The Lighter side of Overpopulation, Famine, Ecological Disaster, Ethnic Hatred, Plague and Poverty"m is a true classic.