Subscribe to Gonzo Weekly http://eepurl.com/r-VTD Subscribe to Gonzo Daily http://eepurl.com/OvPez Gonzo Facebook Group https://www.facebook.com/ groups/287744711294595/ Gonzo Weekly on Twitter https://twitter.com/gonzoweekly Gonzo Multimedia (UK) http://www.gonzomultimedia.co.uk/ Gonzo Multimedia (USA) http://www.gonzomultimedia.com/ Gonzo Daily Blog https://gonzo-multimedia.blogspot.com/ fellow when – last week – I sat down and wrote my editorial for this issue. But, as you have probably guessed, I have been overtaken by events. Dear friends, Nearly 22 years ago, I was deep in the At least once a year I end up having to Mexican desert with my partner in crime write two editorials. This is usually, as in Graham Inglis. I can’t remember exactly this case, because I have been overtaken by what happened, but something went events. terribly wrong with the equipment of the film crew with whom we were making a This week and last week I have been documentary for UK Channel 4. We were without a secretary, because Olivia is in a steep valley full of cactuses, and we starting a new job, and although she will coined a silly phrase which has become still be doing a day a week working for me, part of our parlance ever since about things she is working full time for the first couple having gone Prickly Pear Shaped. And I of weeks as she goes through induction. guess that has been the way things have gone within my life ever since. So, I thought I was being a diligent young “It is with great sadness that we received the news of the passing of John Brodie Good, aged 61, who died peacefully last Tuesday evening, 29th October, following a heart attack. Details of funeral arrangements will follow in due course. Our thoughts are with his partner, Sarah, daughter Kate, and all John's family at this time.” 3 Like the Justified Ancients of Mu Mu, I Tuesday evening, 29th October, following have never had a master plan, or - to be a heart attack. Details of funeral more honest - whenever I have had a arrangements will follow in due course. master plan it has usually gone Our thoughts are with his partner, Sarah, spectacularly wrong. daughter Kate, and all John's family at this time.” And at the moment everything I do is against a background of family illness and I know very little about sport, and so, the sort of general crapulence that is although I use the term “coming out of left becoming all the more regular for us all as field” quite often in order to describe we negotiate the intricacies of the 21st- events like John’s passing which happen century. totally without warning, I actually don’t know what the term refers to, although I I usually do as little as possible on suspect it is something to do with baseball. Saturdays, and last Saturday was no exception. It had been a long hard week, Using colloquialisms when one doesn’t it is the leaving shocks us to our very core hole in our own hearts and so I actually spent most of Saturday really know what they mean is always asleep. I always have a lie in on Sundays, fraught. Years ago I found myself in the but usually work on Sunday afternoon, socially embarrassing position of having to with my Sunday tasks predominantly explain to the wife of a retired vicar that consisting of going through three days of when she used the term “monging out” she unopened emails. Last Sunday was no was actually saying that she intended to exception, but amidst the usual wallage of take enough drugs to reduce herself to the adverts for Viagra, and Filipino mail order mental state of someone with Down’s brides, was a very sad email from Sarah, Syndrome. the partner of long time Gonzo Weekly contributor John Brodie Good. But I digress. He apparently had a massive and totally I have always referred to the community unexpected heart-attack, and died a few that has built up around this magazine as days later without having regained being a ‘family’, but the range of emotions consciousness. John was also a major which have been displayed since John’s figure in ecotourism seen here in the UK, passing truly confirm this, as if any and the following announcement was confirmation were needed. I wrote to all posted on Rare Bird Alerts: the contributors on Sunday afternoon, and within minutes Thom Woodruff replied: ”It is with great sadness that we received the news of the passing of John Brodie “We had a haiku poet Jan Benson leave Good, aged 61, who died peacefully last 4 yesterday. Here is a haiku that may work for John: it is the leaving shocks us to our very core “death holds up an all- hole in our own hearts” seeing mirror, ‘the mirror of Although we had corresponded a lot over past actions’, to our eyes, in the past two or three years, John and I had which the consequences of never met in the flesh. It was a great pity, because we had a lot in common and I’m all our negative and positive sure that we would’ve been great friends in actions are clearly seen and person as well as online. And it is a great tragedy that this is now not ever going to there is a weighing of our happen. past actions in the light of Rest in Peace John, with much love from their consequences, the me and all the Gonzo Weekly team. balance of which will determine the kind of existence or mental state we are being driven to enter.” Padmasambhava, The Tibetan Book of the Dead However, whilst I am in the middle of reading out the ‘Parish Notices’ there is better news as well. During the week that faces me as I sit here in my favourite armchair trying to dictate into my iPad, and realising that the wonders of technology are – indeed – pretty marvellous, but are just a pale imitation of having Olivia as a secretary, Graham will be erecting privacy curtains around a third of what used to be my parent’s dining room, but what is now Corinna’s office, in order to give Mother somewhere she can sleep downstairs when she returns from respite at a care home in Abbotsham, near here. 5 I will be negotiating with North Devon district Hospital to take receipt of a I would like to thank all of you who have commode and a walker, and we will be messaged or emailed or phoned me with doing all we can to make sure that when messages of support. Your thoughts and she arrives home she is happy and prayers are appreciated far more than you comfortable. will ever know. Corinna went into hospital last Thursday. Love and blessings to you all, She had day surgery, to put a stent in to Hare bol relieve pressure on her flooded kidney. Jon This appears, at least from where I am sitting, to have been a successful procedure, and I get the impression that her symptoms have been partly alleviated. The next hurdle is her nuclear scan in ten days time. When I suggested that one result of her being injected with radioactive particles would be that she would grow to an enormous size, and roam the streets of Bideford at night, fighting crime, she looked back at me with that withering glance that only wives can give. 6 7 called Arficial Life. Amongst other things, it described how under some Dear friends, circumstances arficially created objects or systems can grow in a way which Welcome to another issue of this peculiarly mirrors that of organic life. increasingly peculiar lile magazine. It has Whilst it has been overtaken by events, been going for very nearly seven years and if the recent claims by Google are to now, and I am glad to say that it sll never be believed, and they have managed to ceases to amaze me. It also grows in a construct a true quantum computer peculiarly organic manner. Many years (something which has not been confirmed ago I first read a book by Stephen Levy, at the me of wring) then it is just about 8 Amongst other things, it described how under some circumstances arficially created objects or systems can grow in a way which peculiarly mirrors that of organic life. to be overtaken by more, it is sll an extremely interesng read. I have noced over the years that magazines, and the organisaons behind them also grow in a peculiarly organic fashion. Indeed, whenever I think about it, I am reminded of The Prime Radiant of the Second Foundaon in Isaac Asimov’s seminal novels. The science behind the ficonal concept of Psychohistory is something which I dwell upon probably more than I should. But it is truly interesng to see how all the human organisaons with which I have been involved in the past 30 years also actually do seem to progress in this manner. A properly funconing magazine, or to be more exact, a properly funconing human organisaon that works to publish a magazine, is a bit like a coral reef. Each of 9 the subsets within the organisaon carry Iron Lady who having beaten the shit out out a clearly visible, though oen not pre- of the Argenne military thought that she delineated funcon. In a previous life I could get away with anything.