Napalm and Silly Putty

Acknowledgments

To begin, I would like to acknowledge those of you who read Brain Droppings. It did better than I expected, and I want to say thanks. By the way, if you haven’t read it yet, fear not. You can read this first and then rush out to the store to get Brain Droppings. The two are not sequential.

For those who did read the first book, you’ll find this is the same sort of drivel. Good, funny, occasionally smart, but essentially drivel.

Thanks also to my boyhood friends from 123^rd Street and Amsterdam Avenue who listened to my street-corner and hallway monologues when I was thirteen and gladdened my young heart by saying, “Georgie, you’re fuckin’ crazy!”

Most of all, thanks to my editor, Jennifer Lang, for her patience and support, and for putting these thoughts of mine in order.

Many native traditions held clowns and tricksters as essential to any contact with the sacred. People could not pray until they had laughed, because laughter opens and frees from rigid preconception. Humans had to have tricksters within the most sacred ceremonies lest they forget the sacred comes through upset, reversal, surprise. The trickster in most native traditions is essential to creation, to birth.