"Chomsky With . . . " Yeah, you know the rest.

Bill Hicks

December 16th 1961 - February 26th 1994

I thought there was a half-chance that the anniversary of Bill Hicks death would be acknowledged on Virtual Stoa via it's long running Dead Socialist Watch series*, but as no mention is given at the time of writing I thought I would just post ablog to say that today is the 11th anniversary of Hick's premature death.

The quotation as a footnote reproduced below aside, I won't bog you down with lots of cut and paste of his best jokes and routines. Type 'Bill Hicks quotes' into the google search engine and you will be deluged with them to your heart's content. Failing that, go into any Student Union Bar round about elevenish any Friday night during term time, sit within earshot of any group of four half cut males (the more goth the better), and the more hammered they get, the greater the propensity for them to regale each other with Bill Hicks routines till chucking out time. Play your cards right, and they may throw in whole gobbets of quotes and excerpts from Withnail and I, The League of Gentlemen and The Day Today as well. It would be my own idea of personal hell but if it gets you away from sitting in front of a computer screen, then why complain? (It is also the case that I can't find my favourite routine of his on the net anyway to easily copy into this post but if and when I do, I'll be sure to add it as an addendum. )

A nice wee bio of Bill Hicks is here on his official website, and I thought the pic above of him in Glasgow Celtic strip would go down well. The barrel chested midfield general look, after the fashion of Bobby Murdoch, kind of suited him.

*No, I'm not claiming Hicks as a back dated fellow traveller of World Socialism. If anything, going by some of his routines, he could have been the celebrity Posadist (tongue firmly embedded in cheek there, btw), but going by Virtual Stoa's elasticated definition of what constitutes a socialist in its Dead Socialist Watch series, then the following famous quote from Hicks wouldn't look out of place next to the mutterings of some of the other worthies Chris Brooke has listed in the past:

"I'm gonna share with you a vision that I had, cause I love you. And you feel it. You know all that money we spend on nuclear weapons and defense each year, trillions of dollars, correct? Instead -- just play with this -- if we spent that money feeding and clothing the poor of the world -- and it would pay for it many times over, not one human being excluded -- we can explore space together, both inner and outer, forever in peace. Thank you very much. You've been great, I hope you enjoyed it."