April 21, 2007 journal, earthday in the USA, creative writing, the dangers of restaurant food. the troubled correctional blind tools to get at Buford the terrible crash of the Blue Angels jet at Buford South Carolina and base. airshows are dangerous so is War. China is shown moving more into cars and awful bicycles as their heart problems increase from not and and bicycles. This seems to give a new definition to poor folks may be better off. Good bye America is the title of one article in the current Times examiner newspaper. This is my answer to Michael Gant's outrageous review of Colorful Apocalypse and the"wild" artists he describes is not akin to the truth in any way whatsoever. I hope enough people will respond to him on the metroactive site from the Silicon Valley so that he will be pushed off the front page. I found it by putting in the colorful apocalypse by Greg bottoms on search engine MSN, Metroactive is at the bottom of the first page. I have not posted anything on their site and the site suddenly seemed to disappear. As a victim of Greg Bottoms The Colorful Apocalypse book I am responding to the outrageous review by Michael Gant posted on Metroactive weekly site from Silicon Valley. Gant takes bottoms a step further into totally ridiculous fabrications classifying the artists as wild and saying how I found God after I had a stroke. I have never had a stroke or even so much as broken a bone. If Michael Gant had read the book he would know that I found God through Christ at age 13. I want to ask Michael Gant which of my 700 paintings posted on my websites are racist or anti-Semitic. Arthompson dot com or thompson-art dot com, artoutsider dot com show most of my paintings and to my knowledge if any are not shown it is not because they would be subversive. I must depend on other people to put my artwork up online. None of my art is racist or anti Semitic. I also have 3 books of my art out and available to the public-Art World of William Thomas Thompson, Apocalyptic Art by William Thomas Thompson, and 7 Days of Creation by William Thomas Thompson. None of the artists in the book are crazy as Bottoms implies and none compare to the "madness" of his schoizophrenic brother. The language of Michael Gant is very damaging. I would classify him as the wild one, not the artists. When the book The Colorful Apocalypse produces lies and fabrications it seems to incite others to jump on the bandwagon to trash the South, the Christian religion, to falsely accuse us of being fundamentalist whatever that term really means other than referring to the Republican Christians that flavor the war which I do not. I am neither Republican nor Democrat. This is a form of religious persecution. The language of Michael Gant is hateful with no regard for the truth whatsoever. At first I thought it is just a crackpot but then I believe we must answer every false accusation to do justice to our cause. We are all individual artists and not to be generalized. Once a falsehood or series of falsehoods in the case of The Colorful Apocalypse has been publicized then others takeoff with it like wildfire without checking out the truth. 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(Learn more) or Ship to: William Thompson ----OR---- Add an address Add gift-wrap/note More Buying Choices -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 32 used & new from $16.10 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Have one to sell? Share your own customer images Search inside this book Are you the publisher or author? Learn how Amazon can help you make this book an eBook. Blackwater: The Rise of the World's Most Powerful Mercenary Army (Hardcover) by Jeremy Scahill (Author) (43 customer reviews) -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- List Price: $26.95 Price: $16.17 & eligible for FREE Super Saver Shipping on orders over $25. Details You Save: $10.78 (40%) Availability: In Stock. Ships from and sold by Amazon.com. Gift-wrap available. Want it delivered Thursday, April 26? Order it in the next 22 hours and 16 minutes, and choose One-Day Shipping at checkout. 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Buy Together Today: $31.13 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Customers who bought this item also bought Licensed to Kill: Hired Guns in the War on Terror by Robert Young Pelton Killer Elite: The Inside Story of America's Most Secret Special Operations Team by Michael Smith Nemesis: The Last Days of the American Republic (American Empire Project) by Chalmers Johnson American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War On America by Chris Hedges A Bloody Business: America's War Zone Contractors and the Occupation of Iraq by Gerry Schumacher Explore similar items : Books (48) DVD (2) -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Editorial Reviews From Publishers Weekly Scahill, a regular contributor to the Nation, offers a hard-left perspective on Blackwater USA, the self-described private military contractor and security firm. It owes its existence, he shows, to the post-Cold War drawdown of U.S. armed forces, its prosperity to the post-9/11 overextension of those forces and its notoriety to a growing reputation as a mercenary outfit, willing to break the constraints on military systems responsible to state authority. Scahill describes Blackwater's expansion, from an early emphasis on administrative and training functions to what amounts to a combat role as an internal security force in Iraq. He cites company representatives who say Blackwater's capacities can readily be expanded to supplying brigade-sized forces for humanitarian purposes, peacekeeping and low-level conflict. While emphasizing the possibility of an "adventurous President" employing Blackwater's mercenaries covertly, Scahill underestimates the effect of publicity on the deniability he sees as central to such scenarios. Arguably, he also dismisses too lightly Blackwater's growing self-image as the respectable heir to a long and honorable tradition of contract soldiering. Ultimately, Blackwater and its less familiar counterparts thrive not because of a neoconservative conspiracy against democracy, as Scahill claims, but because they provide relatively low-cost alternatives in high-budget environments and flexibility at a time when war is increasingly protean. (Apr. 10) Copyright (c) Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. Book Description Meet BLACKWATER USA, the world's most secretive and powerful mercenary firm. Based in the wilderness of North Carolina, it is the fastest-growing private army on the planet with forces capable of carrying out regime change throughout the world. Blackwater protects the top US officials in Iraq and yet we know almost nothing about the firm's quasi-military operations in Iraq, Afghanistan and inside the US. Blackwater was founded by an extreme right-wing fundamentalist Christian mega-millionaire ex- Navy Seal named Erik Prince, the scion of a wealthy conservative family that bankrolls far-right-wing causes. Blackwater is the dark story of the rise of a powerful mercenary army, ranging from the blood-soaked streets of Fallujah to rooftop firefights in Najaf to the hurricane-ravaged US gulf to Washington DC, where Blackwater executives are hailed as new heroes in the war on terror. This is an extraordinary exposé by one of America's most exciting young radical journalists. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Product Details Hardcover: 464 pages Publisher: Nation Books (February 15, 2007) Language: English ISBN-10: 1560259795 ISBN-13: 978-1560259794 Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.1 x 1.3 inches Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds (View shipping rates and policies) Average Customer Review: based on 43 reviews. (Write a review.) Amazon.com Sales Rank: #66 in Books (See Top Sellers in Books) (Publishers and authors: improve your sales) Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images? (We'll ask you to sign in so we can get back to you) Inside This Book Browse Sample Pages: Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index | Back Cover | Surprise Me! Search Inside This Book: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Inside This Book (learn more) Browse Sample Pages: Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index | Back Cover | Surprise Me! Search Inside This Book: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Customers viewing this page may be interested in these Sponsored Links (What's this?) Army Ringtones www.thumbplay.com MP3 Ringtones by Army Fast, Easy & Secure Police Officer Training AllCriminalJusticeschools.com Want to become a police officer? Find out how and apply today. 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Advertise on Amazon -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- What do customers ultimately buy after viewing this item? 90% buy the item featured on this page:Blackwater: The Rise of the World's Most Powerful Mercenary Army by Jeremy Scahill $16.17 5% buy Killer Elite: The Inside Story of America's Most Secret Special Operations Team by Michael Smith $16.47 2% buy Licensed to Kill: Hired Guns in the War on Terror by Robert Young Pelton $15.12 2% buy Chosen Soldier: The Making of a Special Forces Warrior by Dick Couch $17.13 1% buy A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier by Ishmael Beah $12.10 Explore Similar Items -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Help others find this item Make a Search Suggestion | Manage your Search Suggestions No-one has made a Search Suggestion for this item yet. Why not be the first to suggest a search for which this item should appear? -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Tag this product (What's this?) Your tags: (Edit) (Add|Edit) (Press the 'T' key twice to quickly access the "Tag this product" window.) -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Search Products Tagged with See most popular tagsTags customers associate with this product First tag: ravenwood (Laura Stewart on Mar 11, 2007) Last tag: anchors aweight iraq war (2), war (2), amazing (1), anchors aweight (1), biased (1), christian (1), daily show (1), derivative (1), george w bush (1), mercenaries (1), mercenary (1), michael moore (1), military (1), pmc (1), politics (1) See all 29 tags... -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Are you the publisher or author? Learn how Amazon can help you make this book an eBook. If you are a publisher or author and hold the digital rights to a book, you can make it available as an eBook on Amazon.com. Learn more. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Rate this item to improve your recommendations Rate this Item I Own It -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Spotlight Reviews Write an online review and share your thoughts with other customers. Search Customer Reviews 183 of 212 people found the following review helpful: An unflinching serious work of journalism, March 18, 2007 Reviewer: Julia K. "Taurasi Soldier" (Washington DC) - See all my reviews I read this book in one night after hearing Mr. Scahill speak in Washington DC. The book is a remarkable and bracing wake up call about the privatization of war and how that subverts even basic notions of democracy. I find it remarkable that people criticize Mr. Scahill for using terms like "radical Christian right" - as if these terms are caricatures and ad hominem attacks. Hardly. In fact Schaill then spends hundreds of pages breaking down exactly what is so "radical Christian right" about Blackwater. He is a serious journalist who has uncovered a story that is both illuminating and frightening. It's hard to have any respect for people who say "I didn't even get to the first page" and then feel like they can write a review on its content. Last point: As good a writer as Scahill is, he's a better public speaker. People should go hear what he has to say. These aren't easy truths to consume, but they are truths that define and explain the current calamaties unleashed on the world Comment (1) | Was this review helpful to you? (Report this) 180 of 214 people found the following review helpful: A meticulously documented expose, March 1, 2007 Reviewer: Alan B. Maass (Chicago, IL) - See all my reviews Don't believe the reviews on this page smearing this book. Jeremy Scahill has written a meticulously documented book about an all-too-real threat to democracy. And not just in war zones, where Blackwater operates in concert with U.S. forces, but without the accountability, however flawed, of the official military. They appeared, as Scahill documents, on the streets of New Orleans and around the Gulf Coast as a security force. This was in a situation where what was desperately needed was more humanitarian operations--food, rescue, emergency housing. But the Bush administration decided to devote funds to their colleagues from the war zone. Scahill exposes all of this, based on his own eyewitness reporting and on a meticulous analysis of Blackwater's history and operations. By the way, I'm a reporter and editor who has found Scahill's articles extremely valuable, and in any of my following and checking of his stories, I've never found a single point that didn't hold up. The reviewers here may not like the facts he presents, but they are facts. Comments (5) | Was this review helpful to you? (Report this) -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Customer Reviews Average Customer Review: Write an online review and share your thoughts with other customers. 5 of 5 people found the following review helpful: An Unknowwn Army, April 22, 2007 Reviewer: W. P. Strange "Bill's shelf" (Williamstown, MA United States) - See all my reviews The fact that the killed and wounded of the "Blackwater" (read mercenary) army are not included in the accounting of dead and wounded in Iraq is acceptable. That these mercenary soldiers, getting paid better than our own army, are not all Americans doesn't make a difference. What is also important is that there has never been an American war with so many mercenaries fighting along side as allies, and it nearly doubles the number of boots on the ground. "Blackwater" is journalism at its finest. A well written and researched book that gives another wholely different story of what is happening in Iraq, and it makes the whole misguided adventure that much more horrifying. There may be factual errors, or facts that have been missed, but just the fact that there is this story at all should show the world that the Bush administrations war is even more outrageous and America is in deeper trouble than we will ever know - until long after the war is over - if ever. Comment | Was this review helpful to you? (Report this) 14 of 15 people found the following review helpful: Sigh, April 20, 2007 Reviewer: David W. Patrick "dwp" (California) - See all my reviews Great book, also watch Iraq for Sale... In response to these smear campaigning reviewers; you act like this guy is letting the cat out of the bag, but to bad the cat was let out a long time ago. I guess in your minds this all must be a figment of others imaginations. Wake up. Talk to some one in the military that is actually affected by this epidemic, and stop listening to Rush. Comment | Was this review helpful to you? (Report this) 4 of 60 people found the following review helpful: Garbage, April 20, 2007 Reviewer: TC - See all my reviews I read this book the other day and was totally disappointed. The author took a subject that could have been reported on fairly with the true pros and cons of the private military industry and instead turned it into a radical left smear fest. Far too few facts and way too many opinions. DONT WASTE YOUR MONEY. Comments (4) | Was this review helpful to you? (Report this) 19 of 21 people found the following review helpful: This book should be read by everyone in the world!, April 19, 2007 Reviewer: Thomas Montaghami "Average Person" (Anaheim, CA) - See all my reviews A lot of people around the world have been affected by para-military groups, that have been hired by U.S. government. Now the people of Iraq, and soon the people of U.S. will feel the power of America's private military. All the horror, and carnage, and evil that comes from Blackwater, and other mercenary armies that U.S. has inflicted on the people of this planet, should be read, and heard by the citizens of this country. This book is the right step towards that! Jeremy Scahill should win an award for this book! I've heard, and seen him on many TV and radio programs, and he has managed to go where no other journalist, dares to go. Into the belly of the BEAST! Blackwater! Comment | Was this review helpful to you? 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Search Amazon.comBooksPopular MusicMusic DownloadsClassical MusicDVDVideo DownloadsVHSApparelGroceryToysBabyComputersVideo GamesElectronicsCamera & PhotoSoftwareTools & HardwareOffice ProductsMagazinesSports & OutdoorsOutdoor LivingKitchenJewelry & WatchesBeautyGourmet FoodMusical InstrumentsHealth/Personal CarePet SuppliesTravelCell Phones & ServiceOutletAuctionsEverything ElseAutomotiveIndustrial & Scientific Your Recent History Learn more Recently Viewed Products Civil War (Marvel Comics) by Mark Millar The Colorful Apocalypse: Journeys in Outsider Art by Greg Bottoms Writing the Memoir: From Truth to Art by Judith Barrington Recent Searches • colorful apocalypse • colorful apocalypse • norbert h kox • apocalypse the • colorful Apocalypse • Apocalypse, The • apocalypse art four horsemen • BOTTOMS Customers who bought items in your Recent History also bought: The Road to Civil War (Spider-Man, Fantastic Four) by J. Michael Straczynski Inventing the Truth: The Art and Craft of Memoir by William Zinsser Civil War: Amazing Spider-Man by J. Michael Straczynski View & edit Your Browsing History Amazon.com Home | Directory of All Stores International Sites: Canada | United Kingdom | Germany | Japan | France | China Help | View Cart | Your Account | Sell Items | 1-Click Settings Investor Relations | Press Release | Careers at Amazon | Join Associates | Join Advantage | Join Honor System | Advertise With Us Conditions of Use | Privacy Notice (c) 1996-2007, Amazon.com, Inc. or its affiliates My Own Review of The Colorful Apocalypseand Greg BottomsPart One (please also read Part Two)On page 181 of Greg Bottoms' 182 page documentary book " The Colorful Apocalypse ", Mr. Bottoms reveals that "a narrative is not life, and a moment in text is not a moment, only a made thing that presents the illusion of a moment. I did my best, though, to make these illusions look and feel like life, at least as I experienced it; and then, perhaps like a documentary filmmaker, I tried to string together and juxtapose some of what seemed to me to be the most meaningful moments in a way that made sense and told the story as I saw it." How I wish Bottoms had inserted that incredibly revealing statement on page one or even page two! Having read this admission of Bottoms belief in a new style of documentary writing or filmmaking, I clearly could have read the rest of the book with a better understanding of the intent of the writer, that to create a documentary somewhat like "a documentary filmmaker". You see, for the most part, the book purports to detail the life and times of three powerful visionary artists each on his own mission...Howard Finster, William Thomas Thompson and Norbert Kox. And naturally, in the telling of any true story, most authors are granted an amount of leeway for imagination and trivial inventiveness. But Bottoms attempt at being a documentarian fails, falling far into the pit of his own tragic life and its colorful distortion of what lay before him but remained hidden by his laziness and his rush to satisfy grant requirements. As I did not know Mr. Finster, my understanding of the "illusions" presented in Bottoms' book comes from my familiarity with the art and life of Mr. Thompson and Mr. Kox. And as I do not know Mr. Bottoms save through his writings on the tragedy of his personal life and how it has colored his views towards us all, I can only deal with what he reveals about the pain and hurt and amateur psychology that most obviously will control the rest of his life and possibly that of his offspring. Throughout the book sections dealing with Mr. Thompson and Mr. Kox, Bottoms consistently attempts to shoehorn the artists' fervent and steadfast belief in the vision that drives the creation of their art into the same stagnant swamp that produced Bottoms' violent and drug-handicapped brother. Bottoms seems to say repeatedly that his brother's uncontrolled and unleashed mental disorder shares a relative with the "Christian Poor South", a class Bottoms proudly and often reminds us that he has become "one generation removed from". Would that he could run from his brother as easily in telling the lives of these two men but he can't. His brother's madness apparently stamped its image and direction on his soul and in the tips of his hands where skin meets pen. Bottoms too frequently and emphatically compares the unbending will of the visionary artist to the black insanity emanating from within his family. Initially, I believed Bottoms had practiced typical lazy writing, an affliction common to those facing a deadline or lacking any insight into their subject. But as I read and reread the book, more seemed to be at work, especially in Bottoms retelling of the seminal moment in Mr. Thompson's life. I have listened to Mr. Thompson many times...in person, in letters (email) and by phone...on his epiphany, the vision he experienced that has changed his life forever. That telling, the clear vision, has never changed. Never. No matter how many times I listened, the same events, the same times, the same results would reveal themselves. It is this reliably repetitive telling that has allowed me to know the truth behind the words he relates and the legitimacy of Mr. Thompson's art as influenced by his vision. Bottoms asserts that he listened to the same man I have tell the events I have heard over and over but writes an account that clearly is "only a made thing". However, Bottoms claims it as documentary-level truth while relaying that his new version of Mr. Thompson's life-changing vision now has the stamp of authenticity and replaces the original. Bottoms also claims that this type of thing happens to those types of people, those people of his brother and of that "Christian Poor South" that he has proudly become "one generation removed from". The entire section of Colorful Apocalypse dealing with Mr. Thompson's important and driving event has been fabricated by Bottoms in the telling. Probably just Bottoms trying to "string together and juxtapose some of what seemed to me to be the most meaningful moments in a way that made sense and told the story as I saw it." I don't think it can be that simple. Simple it would be to pick out little things, cast-away remarks....locked in a tower, lips painted red, a deaf mother, a Mr. T brother yelling confusing lies...Bottoms claims as truth. And simple it would be to claim these burdensome, burgeoning lies as the subjective rant of "an amateur", of this "Camus instead of Joyce." Oh how simple to claim the book could have been four or five hundred pages instead of the most important, the most relevant 182 pages. And as a publisher, how really simple life is when you disavow responsibility for an unrelenting page-after-page of seemingly fabricated dreams by claiming the subjective nature of the author and his quest to be free of the bonds that tie all good men trumping any right to factual reporting of "whole reels" of recordings that ended up in the trash. What simple author, one just feeling the breeze, trying to relate to the subject at hand in his own manner records hours of conversation, writes books of notes? Simple...none. No one, no writer wanting to catch the dissipating mist of an idea, the fleet-footed wing of a mood takes mounds of notes, records reels of tape. In art terms, Monet took no photographs in his attempt to show that which made him feel, a feat Bottoms and his publisher claim as the true sojourn of this wounded but courageous young master. Yet Bottoms claims to have done just that. And most incredibly, Bottoms asserts that he forever consulted those hard-copy proofs of his trek across his beloved Poor South. Bottoms claims that it was "the help of tapes and transcripts" that jogged his soaked memory, that cleared-up the hazy remembrance of his quest to show "a sliver of a sliver" of the outsider art world in a "willfully subjective presentation". In those three words...willfully subjective presentation...Bottoms again empties his bowels of the honest and humble notion of showing that which is before you. Bottoms reveals to all his readers, unfortunately on the last page of his book, that he will stubbornly press his daggered life and times into that which he sees and hears from the two men I know in his book. Bottoms defines for the reader that he will stubbornly present that which belongs to Bottoms as the visionary force behind Thompson and Kox rather than the vision held by these two men and their presentation of that vision in their art. In doing so, Bottoms and his publisher place excessive, misleading and damaging emphasis on Bottoms' own moods and tragedy-filled life while expressing almost total disregard for the truths of his subjects' experience. Simple it would be to pick out the simple lies and fabrications. Simple, too, to dispute those picks, as an author or publisher, with claims of subjectivity and eye-of-the-beholder speak. But running from that stated truth eventually becomes complicated. Bottoms has crafted a book that adheres to a tenet he claims to live by in his hobby as a "journalist....a kind of documentary filmmaker". As he so eloquently quotes on page 122 (deep into his assault), Bottoms asserts that he will gain his story by approaching his victims with the purpose of "gaining their trust and betraying them without remorse". Bottoms claims, in an unusual statement on how to live and, even worse, how to treat others, that this is the only way (in his role as a kind of documentary filmmaker) to make sense out of his travels amongst the people he has met. To act as a sort of confidence man, bankrupted of the quest for the true story, while wedging Bottoms' own view of madness between himself and his subjects' story. This is a complicated run at producing a book, at getting a story, such as the one he has created, published. Bottoms found, indeed is employed by, conspirators in his mission and others who embrace any version of a story as long as they don't have to learn anything on their own. I could go on and on but am becoming bored with Bottoms, his book and the lazy attempt he has created to distance himself not only from that "poor Christian South" that courses through his family's veins but in an attempt to find in many others the madness that creeps slowly up on him from behind, in the dark corners of his eyes. I'll close with a listing of Bottoms' revelatory musings and will translate them so that you, his unfortunate reader, may somehow get through the book without the madness that may have afflicted Bottoms: * Talking about Finster, Bottoms claims to have seen a movie on him when he was a youngster but not watching it again, fourteen years later, before starting a book on the man because "In my imperfect recollection of the film( I haven't watched it again so as not to destroy my memory with a lesser reality), Finster played ...a banjer." Translation: Bottoms views his unaided recollection as more valid than the actual recorded event so much so that he does not view the material again out of fear of getting it right. It appears that, in Bottoms' mind, the recorded version has become the "lesser reality" and his attempt to "make sense out of what I saw" has replaced the true version. Very unusual and complicated. * Bottoms uses quotes by his subjects that deal with other matters in sentences wholly crafted by him to illustrate his own views. In one case, relating an AVAM meeting with a young fan of Mr. Thompson's, Bottoms feels the fan has gotten the message of a painting wrong, that the fan is all bundled up in pimples and piercing, unable to grasp the vision he thinks Mr. Thompson meant to portray. Bottoms writes that he wonders why Mr. Thompson doesn't "shoot fire out of his mouth" and tell the fan about "Jesus being a white guy". Translation: Bottoms repeatedly (to quote them all would make me just as much a prisoner as to Bottoms' upbringing as his brother has become) inserts attributions in wholly crafted views that seem to assert those attributions belong to his subjects when they are clearly created and owned in Bottoms own past and family life. In the process, because of the way Bottoms presents the text, his subjects are damaged through Bottoms own limited understanding. * Bottoms often and erroneously compares his subjects to what he believes are certified nutcases. In one particularly damning claim, Bottoms states that he has used his own sense of the issues to determine that Mr. Thompson is just like August Natterer. Translation: Unfortunately, the only clear link between Natterer (a hospitalized, suicidal schizophrenic who was unable to function in society and spent most of the last 26 years of his life locked away in institutions for the insane) and Mr. Thompson is that they both claimed to have had a vision. Doubly unfortunately for Mr. Thompson, Bottoms emphatically and forever has linked him with someone unable to get through life on his own, a man who claimed to read the future and predict great events, not a man who was spreading a vision not of his own making, as Mr. Thompson does in his art. * Bottoms refers to Mr. Thompson and his art repeatedly in marketing terms, variously referring to Thompson's art as "currently hot", claiming that "his eccentricity is in direct accordance to his value as an artist and he is highly valued at this time" and , in text, implying a contrivance by Thompson to engender a "hard sell" of his work and vision. Bottoms also links Thompson's presence at American Visionary Art Museum (AVAM) with a type of cheap barkerism. Translation: Bottoms damages Thompson's presentation of his vision through his art by repeatedly connecting Thompson's attempts at creating on canvas that which drives him to an art world and process that Thompson cares little about and has never embraced. Bottoms claims that the most respected and presentable venue for Thompson's work, the American Visionary Art Museum in Baltimore, acts like a pimp to Thompson's supposed whoring ways. Bottoms denigrates AVAM and Thompson and holds them both up to unanswered ridicule by describing scene after scene that seems at odds with Thompson's stated mission to get the word out about his work. Bottoms even suggests that the presence of a snack shop and accoutrements in the museum somehow invalidates all else within, including Thompson's art * In one particularly indecipherable passage, Bottoms links Mr. Thompson's concentration on his vision and work with the life of Gerald Hawkes, "a poor heroin addict from the ghettos of Baltimore" and with the life of William Burroughs, "who shot his wife and shot up in Warhol's factory". Bottoms does this by claiming that Thompson ignores the differences in the two nutcases work, that somehow Thompson refusal to consider their art points to character flaws in the man. No real translation for this one. * Bottoms, without attribution or quotes, out of hand states that Thompson would send all Buddhists to hell. * Bottoms assigns to Mr. Thompson an encompassing and devouring depression. Bottoms repeatedly refers to cases of depression in others, including rampant prevalence of the disease throughout Bottoms' own addicted-handicapped family, as somehow being assigned through dictum to Thompson. Bottoms pulls the little knowledge of history of the outsider art movement he has from the black, grainy pit of his own experience and brushes across the entire field, including splashing across Thompson and his work. Translation: Bottoms lazily takes what admittedly little he knows about art, outsider art and life and decides to present this small vial of poison as the facts in his "documentary filmmaker" presentation of Thompson and Kox's life. Bottoms presents so much unusual text and silly links that I guess I could go on for days and days. But, as I've said, I am bored with this and must stop. This is as good a place to stop as any . Part TwoI am reviewing this book on my own, this Colorful Apocalypse, after reading it twice cover to cover, reading most of it more times than I can count and after concentrating on Mr. Thompson's portrayal more so than the rest. As I've said, I know Mr. Thompson and know Mr. Kox less so. Most of my review deals with the parts related to Mr. Thompson. It is as clear to me as the sky above that Bottoms not only has created a fictional account of the time spent with Mr. Thompson but that Bottoms has also created a message and vision that belongs only to Bottoms. In interviews conducted after the publishing, Bottoms does what most con men do when removed from their craft...they invent a persona and become it for the interviewer. Bottoms claims in an interview that "I also wanted to let them speak for themselves at length, more at length than I might otherwise, in another project." He asserts that he documented, consulted, recorded and vetted what he wrote, that he alone respects the message these visionary artists have embraced and show in their art. He accuses many galleries and museums of attempting to "collect stories and package them and offer them up" in some unusual conspiracy of capitalism that denigrates the vision. He says that, for the most part, they miss the important message behind most visionary art and Thompson's in particular and accuses galleries and museums of deadening the message. Bottoms, naturally, initially sees himself above all this in a way a documentarian is above advertising. But, in his pseudo artistic and martyred style designed to engender a feeling of motherly love for Bottoms, he then asks "Well, what the hell do I do?" when referring to how he spends time with his victims only to report on them later for his own enrichment. Time after time in Colorful Apocalypse, Bottoms intimates that Mr. Thompson suffers great depression because of the way he acts and what he says but provides no proof. Bottoms states that it is wrong to equate madness with freedom, wrong to disenfranchise artists in the way AVAM does, according to him, but provides to backup to his thoughts save for the background he has dealing with a nutcase in his own family. Seemingly, we the readers, are to blindly accept Bottoms as a visionary psychologist because there exists a frightening homicidal madness enveloping his won family. He asks us to believe that he is manner clairvoyant because he has suffered under familial insanity. But, I don't buy it. I don't believe he sees that true nature of people anymore than a tree knows its being wet down by the dog lifting its leg right next to it. I don't accept Bottoms cutesy, trifled style of denying his attempt at documentary writing by claiming, as he does, that he is a master memoirist, that his goal was to live with, to breathe with, to listen to his victims. The proof that he did none of what he claims in interviews conducted the book was published exists in the Colorful Apocalypse. His book damns the stated goals, the espoused life-journey-as-writer that he wears like a red badge of courage. I think Bottoms is neither documentarian nor memoirist, illuminated writer nor sparkling recorder, not insightful author nor accomplished feeling-because-I've-been-hurt puppy dog. I think what Bottoms has produced is a con. And that con marks him more than any claim else. I'm bored again. Maybe more later.