"What it is is contempt, disappointment, distaste, disillusionment. That plays as anger, naturally, because we're limited to these words that kind of define things rigidly."

Gettingit.com: The Happy Pessimist: "GI: In your most recent HBO special, you seemed really bitter and pissed off. I was surprised, myself, by how extreme it was. But I've heard you say you're pretty happy in your personal life. 

 GC: Yeah, there's not an ounce of bitterness, or anger, or anything in it. What it is is contempt, disappointment, distaste, disillusionment. That plays as anger, naturally, because we're limited to these words that kind of define things rigidly. Anger is a convenient way to describe what people see. It's very much like anger, and I guess by some definitions it is. But I don't experience it as anger. I experience it as contempt, disillusionment...

I have always had my dangerous flirtations with the mainstream. I've used it to serve my purposes, and it has, in a way, used me in a fair exchange. I've always kind of been of two minds when I'm doing something fairly mainstream: One is the critical observer outside, and the other is the person who wants something and is willing to make an accommodation to get it. All of living is, of course, a series of accommodations -- with conditions as they are -- so I don't look at it as anything more serious than that. 

...a curve of behavior that can be called a series of accommodations ... in order to pursue your own purposes in life. So I say the pure person is living in the woods, eating bark, and making his clothing out of vines. That's the purest person. And somewhere along the line, when you decided to wear clothing and use buses and use the telephone, you began a series of accommodations. So for instance, Ted Kaczynski hated, hated technology. He was willing to kill because of his hatred of technology -- and yet he used a typewriter to type his manifesto. And he rode the buses, an advanced form of technology, to get to the post office, where he used a government agency to deliver his crude technologies. So he's not a sellout, and I say, therefore, who is, and what's this all about? So it's kind of a philosophical examination of that...

GI: That's cool. Are there any philosophers that you've admired? 

GC: Well, when it comes to philosophers, I'm local. So I like people like Gore Vidal and Noam Chomsky. And I correspond with Robert Anton Wilson.

GI: You were publicly associated with a cocaine problem. Do you have an opinion at this point about coke as compared to pot and the hallucinogens? 

GC: I think it's pretty apparent that the hallucinogens are mind-expanding and value-changing, paradigm-shifting, and they sort of have a self-limiting quality, if listened to. Not everyone's life is in a place where they're open to knowing that and acting on it, but essentially I think those drugs have that quality. Whenever it comes to refining things is when we get into trouble. Refining sugar, refining flour, refining these plants into higher forms of the drug is when things get twisted. So, cocaine... it was a lot of fun, and I wouldn't trade any of that time, except I wish I'd written more seriously during those years. It sure helps you clean off the desktop."