Thanatopsis

"My body is trying to kill me." - Michelle Bachman

"All I can think about is the time passing and the next drink." - Rick Scott

"I've been up so long it looks like down to me." - John Boehner, on ecstasy listening to Randy Newman with Kevin McCarthy

"I am a little toy boat afloat on a river of Ambien." - Nancy Pelosi

"Humanity is the rainbow gleam on an oil slick." - Michael R. Bromwich

"Judge, I'm Evil!"
"Counsel, put the boy down."
- Eric Cantor at Virginia Youth Legislature

"Where is Death when we need it?"
"Join the Peace Corps, you PBR-plutocrat."
- The Editors, Barney Frank

"You can take the Jew out of Germany, but you can't take Germany out of the Jew." - Henry Kissenger, Operation Menu

"Arm in arm we shall march into the glorious communist future." - FDR, in a letter to Uncle Joe on his deathbed

"The Road is the Atlas Shrugged of our time." - Rand Paul

"I don't really take damnation seriously after Taiwan." - John Hunstman to Elton John, Battleboro, NH

"How can you smile through such horror?"
"Populism."
- John McCain walking through the ashes of a dead forest

"The black lipstick!" - Pervez Musharaff at the Geneva Doom Portal

"If we leave too soon, we may sacrifice the gains we've made." - David Petraeus on the campaign to conquer Hell

"Where's the courts?" - John McEnroe, the 6th Concentric Circle

"There's no accounting for taste." - Gilles de Rais

I Killed Them All

"Hell is all around, Billy." - Brig. Gen. Jimmy Stewart bombing Hamburg

"I'm no hero, but I played one at USC!" - John Wayne, grifter

"I am the Red Baron!"
-A dissipated Errol Flynn, carried off-stage at a War Bond rally

"With the Krauts, it feels like a fair fight. But those Japs... It's like fighting monsters." - Barbara Stanwyck, Hero of Guadalcanal

"Roll the fucking dice!" - Capt. Jimmy Stewart, 14 October 1943

"To prepare for my role, I voted for John Kerry."
- Jake Gyllenhaal on Jarhead

"Poutine! Maple syrup!"
- the last words of Pvt. Justin Bieber, Tripoli, 2015

"There were thousands of them, horrible, blotting out the sky!"
- a malarial Lt. Kelsey Grammar evacuated from Grenada

Libidinal Politics

Dear Julian,

Please accept my wife as a token of your superior relevance.

Yours,

Slavoj

Celluloid Heroes

“Paint the town red and rename it Hell!” - Mike Bloomberg, Mid-Town Drifter

“Hey, why don't we just call it Fucking?” - One of the Editors before being fired from the set of Videodrome

“There's all this praise of Scorcese like he's some big risk taker. If he had any guts he never would have turned down Slope Wagon.” - Angelina Jolie on her dream project, in which a single foster mother finds fulfillment by fighting off an evil hybrid SUV.

“There's far too much emotion, too much love, and concern with maturity in the last few. I'm just over it. I want the next movie to have a real sense of fun and frivolity. Something warm and with a real feeling of openness. You know like an insurance company ad.” - Judd Apatow on his new James Franco film, Subrogation

“If you'd done Purple Rain you could have found redemption with me in Minneapolis. Instead you choose the Wiz, and for that I'll never forgive you.” - Prince to Sidney Lumet

“I am this damn part! You call the shots and think of yourself as some sort of cinematographer, well you're just a hand-holding gimp! Mate, I'm so pissing real I'm the opiate of love.” - A furious Russell Crowe about to strike Steven Soderbergh with his smart phone, set of Biden: Born to the Rails

“I'm really just more of a TV guy.” - Jimmy Fallon, on life

"A drifter doesn't need a woman." - Katherine Hepburn

“Everyone makes a big show of talking about 'range.'” But Reagan could really act. Cary and I use to have a few highballs and just marvel at him. Back then he was the only actor we knew who could do a scene with a chimpanzee and not need to take LSD.” - Angie Dickinson

Time Will Pass You By

A Top Forties-themed dance party taking place in my living room, which I am ignoring because I have marketing work to complete for my job at the apartheid-fortifying Princeton Review, inspired me to acknowledge the world's greatest Top 40 perennial with a Google search. Children: your youth is fading and soon you will die.

- Karl Rove

The Laws of Fucking

"I am Pan! Everybody fuck!" - Harry Reid at Burning Man

"Don't you see? This is about more than just fucking."
- Bill Clinton, on fucking

"A father must never touch his children, no matter how much they crave his affection." - POTUS Obama II

"Anne Hathaway is the nadir of white femininity." - James Franco

"Vaginas are disgusting." - Chloë Sevigny

"Is it my body?" - Newt Gin-Ginch in a tunnel of meat

"I wish my body had a self-destruct button."
"Women have pregnancy."
- Dominique Strauss-Khan, Bernard Henri-Lévy

"Jesus, when it rains, it pours, doesn't it?" - Anthony Weiner, on expecting a child

"I cut off my clitoris for this?" - Huma Abedin

Commodification of Dreams in the Analog Octagon

"Fascist trash! Meet the true love!" - Pedro Almodovar before stabbing J.J. Abrams with a raw dildo

"The apps please me more than the pig gurgle of my fellow man." - Steve Jobs

"Everything advertised on cartoons when I was 8 is excellent." - Lost Generation 2.0

"If Al-Qaeda wishes to be relevant again they'll have to attack Comic-Con." - Leon Panetta in response to a question from Sen. Scott Brown, Senate Committee on Recess

"Africa will be far better even than X-Box 360." - Bill Gates announcing his micro credit card program for Windows Mobile, Developing Nation Edition

"What the hell is going on?" - Tom Hanks, fading into the ether

"Sim City X will allow the player to actually redesign Dubai, and will include new disasters such as Erik Prince." - Will Wright

"My diaper is full auntie, may I have another hot dog?" - Warren Buffet to Melinda Gates

"I like Asian women." - Mark Zuckerberg on Innovation to Fareed Zakaria, Davos

GTA: Kabul to consist entirely of long drives through desert, interrupted by meals at Pizza Hut, until you die.

"I never thought it would get this bad." - Steven Spielberg

"After the tapas and the anisette I said my goodbyes and took to bed. There I dreamed of a shop, but it was smooth and entirely of white. The people there were finely dressed but gave all their money for small shiny boxes. Tomorrow Panchito, I want orders drawn up, all ketchup is to be removed from the nation." - General Francisco Franco, after a night of awkward pleasure