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

Coast to Coast

20:33 PST
Bill: Swallow me!
Pat: How far are you?
Bill: An abundance of bridges in this city and none of the will to jump. A discussion of sharks has been interrupted by the pale king. Death incarnate. Horrible creatures, consuming their own intestines. Self-negation as primordial vitality.
Pat: Very Hegelian.
Bill: Monsters.
Pat: What a sloppy parade.

20:50 PST
Bill: I might as well be a eunuch commando.
20:55 PST
I should drink more whisky.
20:56 PST
And earlier in the day.
20:57 PST
God, Weiner was just lonely. Everyone is missing the point.
He is a ghost.
20:59 PST
He should have pinned it on Hosni. He is toast anyways.
I am a little drunk.
2:00 EST
Pat: Incredible.

2:01 EST
Pat: I am the sexual equivalent of the permanently unemployed.
Bill: I might as well be unemployed. I have lost all courage.
Pat: Labor market treating ya tough?
Bill: Takes more than it gives. And it is never satisfied with my work these days. Don't credentials mean anything?! I went to Barnard, goddammit.
Are we talking about work or sex?

23:16 PST
Bill: Your self-depreciation hits too close to my home.
Pat: We are white men, so it's not a surprise.
Bill: You and me, we should go to Burning Man and kill everyone there.

23:27 PST
Bill: I just smashed my iPhone screen. I will murder anyone you finger.
Pat: Walk the path to freedom.
Bill: The big sleep.
Pat: Good bye for seven hours.

Fucking Without Fucking

"I'm going to show you all the stimulus." - Ben Bernanke before being tackled to the ground outside St. Aloysius School for Young Men

"I will make of you a Twitter bitch." - Andrew Breitbart

"I am a dream god of pure fiber." - Wolf Blitzer to Anthony Weiner

"I am the clap, you are the trap." - Mitt Romney to Donny Osmond

"Flee for your lives!" - Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Kraken, as euneuchs crash through the windows of a board meeting

"It's the gesture that counts. I gave the Queens car the V when I was 19, but I didn't actually fuck her." - Harry Wales

"Finger-tapping, soul-killing, ear-kissing, empire-melting Woman!" -a young Sky Briggs leaving a screening of Mary Poppins

'You remember that one time your female friend let her kiss you?'

'Yeah, you remember that one time the hot dog stand guy gave you an extra dog?'

- Anthony Weiner and Jon Stewart, 1982

"Is it true your nips are hot pink?"- Hank Paulson to the Butter Queen

"The fallout from your sex reached all the way to Wyoming!"- Barry Manilow at Macao

"Bobby Jindall tried to get in the bed last night. Kept sayin' 'the dogs are cold!' - Sen David Vitter, GOP Convention, Tampa 2012

"Who cares about Anthony's weiner?" - Katherine Sebelius, laughing uncontrollably at a Cabinet Meeting while everyone looks on in stunned silence

"I wasn't invited but my putrid skin was." - Rupert Murdoch on the Bloomberg White House Press Correspondents Dinner Orgy

"Women are incapable of transcendence." - Bill Clinton

What You're Really Like

"You're like John Wilkes Booth: a Romantic in a world of Industry." - Hugh Hefner to his dog Labia

"If you have to go to another country to obtain medical treatment, you do not deserve to rule." - Jean-Bertrand Aristide

"Tyler Perry is a Tom." - Martin Scorcese

"Brown is the new Barnard." - Judith Butler

"The Police are sovereign." - Samuel Alito

"God, your horrible eyes are sick with drink." - Joan Collins to Judy Garland

"Interns are pre-emptive scabs." - Jon Stewart

"Truly, the 21st century offers everything but class consciousness." - Michelle Obama

"White people love walking around with clear plastic cups." - Michelle Williams

"'Sculpture' is what you call statues that suck." - Ai Weiwei

What I'm Really Like

"I wish life could be like a black sitcom." - Bill Clinton

"Money is world peace." - Bono

"Don't worry, I'll just rub all this money in the wounds." - Ali Abdullah Saleh

"I am the Karl Lagerfeld of dictatorship." - Col. Q

"I am my mother's post-partum depression." - George W. Bush

"I am the opposite of Oscar Wilde." - Hillary Clinton

"I am Idi Amin!" - Yaphet Kotto

"Being a soldier is stupid, yet every man thinks meanly of himself for not having been one." - John Lennon

"I was called a 'faggot' and a 'motherfucker' today on a picket line. Exhilarating!" - The Editors

"Cheating is the new winning." - Mark McGwire

"It's not the color of your skin that matters, it's the color of your grammar."  - Bob Costas

"Acting is a party trick." - Marlon Brando

"I don't believe in God, but I believe in lizard men." - Jimmy Carter 

Tony Weiner for Student Body President

"Confidentiality and transparency are not opposites: they go hand in hand."

"The rain of Time rinses off the mud of youth."

"I don't need to touch."

"My penis is a blood fountain."

"This bitch is pure cinnamon."

"God, my iTunes is all just hill billy/nigger howling at the moon for a woman."

"Another sixty protestors were killed in Syria today."

"I don't care how long it takes, as long as I die at the end, it's cool."

Mystic Desire of the FLOTUS

"The stars form a great wyrm, with the right frequency, you and I can control it, Ronnie." - Nancy Reagan

"I got the starts!" - Betty Ford

"My life is a psychedelic nightmare, my brain, a laser-light show."- Hillary Clinton, 1998

"I will arm wrestle any of those swine. Organics!" - Michelle Obama explaining Fox News to HM, Buckingham Palace

"Valences of Domestication: human/animal, parent/child, man/woman, city/country, society/id, Eric Clapton/bluespower." - DSM XX

"Every time I try to kill Hitler, Rob Lowe shows up with the whip!" - a time traveling Jimmy Carter to his wife Rosalyn

"There's a bull loose in the park!" - Ron Paul, gored from behind at his son Rand's christening

"Is that Dave Matthews?"
"No, that's Lance Qadaffi."
- Three Louts, Prospect Park

"Jesus Christ, he's got a flail!"
"Yah! Back to the cage, pig men!"
- Tim Pawlenty, Christmas Morning

"Just the USSR Women's Wresting team, please." - Elenore Roosevelt, The UN Cafe, 1948

Unrepresentative Men

"There is nothing more disgusting than an undistinguished-looking white man." - Mark Twain

"My ideal woman has Britt Ekland's body and Lars Von Tries mind!" - Anthony Weiner to Bill O'Reilly, The Steam Room

"Without Shaq my hatred of life and mankind is as meaningless as Canadian basketball." - Kobe Bryant

"Jesus turn that shit down it sounds horrible. Is it 1980's Crosby, Stills, and Nash or a pop album from a white shoe law firm?"
"No damn it Dad, it's Fleet Foxes."
- Robert Christgau and his son Pitchfork discussing Learned Helplessness Blues

"Kiss my clasp. Now stop that lookin around. Send that boy Chip Cravaack in here, my feet feel wet and I want to reward him." - Saxby Chambliss

"I'm the last starfighter!" - Mitt Romney, pandering to a group of virgins

Free Market Association

Brother Herman,

Commentators from Zizek to Stanley Fish talk about how liberal tolerance is not equivalent to its own self-image: tolerance is always structured by implicit exclusions, by that which will not be tolerated. For example, religion. In liberal society, religious faith must be private, ironic, must not be imposed on others as a universal truth--which amounts to saying that it must not be religious. However, such naysayers are missing the real sense in which liberal society privatizes religion, which in truth is no loss at all: religion must be private, not as in the First Amendment or as in the Ninth, but private as in enterprise. Recalling certain jokes about high altitude real estate getting one closer to heaven, we note that the real estate market in certain parts of Lower Manhattan values properties on their proximity, measured in fractions of an inch, to the New York Stock Exchange, since closer properties give black box trading computers a competitive advantage in conducting their light-speed communications with the central stock exchange servers.

Yours in faith,

Mike Huckabee

***

Dear Gov. Huckabee,

I will not buy your BBQ sauce no matter how fast nor how tall in relation to my meat.

Loaves and fishes,

Herman Cain, Th.D, Church of Mozzarella