It Will Never Be 2011 Again

Another year.

Lies. Lies. Lies. Lies. Lies.

Thus 2012, the least productive year on the blog, comes to an end,
And the passage of time cannot help but remind us:

It will never be 2011 again.

The year of the Arab Spring, the Israeli Summer, the American Fall, the Russian Winter, and the Chinese New Year,
The year of Occupy Wall Street and the murder of Osama bin Laden,
The year the sea swallowed Japan, and Iran swallowed Jafar Panahi,

When the Republican primaries were still in their earliest, most experimental and fruitful days,
When the mania of our sexual deprivation was at its most delirious, and resignation only a distant eventuality,
When a black man could not walk to the bodega without being stopped by the cops and, crucially, no one yet cared,

When planking was the new vuvuzela,
When the Higgs Boson was still just a theory,
and we were just friends with The New Inquiry,
When Terence Malick was but a glimmer in Jessica Chastain's eye,

The year History came back to collect,
the year of kings laid low by dreams
and dreams laid low by philistines
backed by force of arms.

That was our year. When shit was real.

One day graduate students scavenging from the dustbins of culture will write universally ignored monographs citing, in passing, this bunga bunga blog as an essential cultural expression of the year 2011. A phenomenon truly, irrepressibly, irresponsibly of its moment--a moment now forever past.

That's why we're giving up.

Our world-historical mission has been accomplished, and after the long, hard comedown of 2012, we've realized that we'd be kidding ourselves if we thought we could ever match that incandescence again. Our man on the West Coast is heading off to convalesce in Mexico after a bout of brain fever. Our Brooklyn personnel were last seen somewhere in the Meadowlands, jabbering on about Elysium. And our Nashville office has been burned to the ground so that nothing shall remain for those who survive.

And you, dear reader... You have our thanks and our pity. What have we given you all these years but lies--bread and circuses!--petty amusements that, by soothing your wounds, have only enabled you to endure yet more of lifes countless indignities?

Do not forgive us. Hate on, you crazy diamonds. As they say in Mexico, the night is always darkest just before it is black forever.

- The Editors

A Holiday Greeting from Father

Dear Son Boy —

Long times have passed since last I wrote. That is my way to avoid you being in the pain we suffer here. It is not any lack of concern for keeping you informed and in the family reach. Your ma and I are most proud of all you have managed and only rue our own suffering crowds out much joy.

Grampy sits in a daze. We thank God for the freeze because it keeps the flies away from the spittle caked around his bloodless lips. Never have I been so grateful for such cold. Your sister claims to be returning for the upcoming season from her time with the ancient people but the ancients have fallen to sin and appropriations are properly taken from them. They cannot escape justice. Yea, we pray she will escape to us.

Your uncle is gone. Rumor is he is rutting in the woods with the free and wild women but folks talk too much and think too little. Your mother cares for my injury with ability, candor, and only rare cruelty. That is my burden and hers.

Do not believe what they say son boy. It is liars and Pharasites who claim Christmas was derived from the pagans. They are filled with sin and the evil of the world that oozes out from its dirt, its trees, and the sapped, sordid, skin of its creatures. I feel that evil stirring even under the ice and I am afraid.

But do not let the children of Hell steal Christmas. Do not allow it. Rise to smite them. Smite their filthy souls—may that I would have had the strength the world needs you to summon but I did not. Now I lie in the filth.

Happy Holidays.

Your Father

The Truth is that Our Society is Populated by an Unknown Number of Genuine Monsters

I. GUNS

"It's not the guns, we need to hunt these damn Asperg sociopaths down in their holes!" - Wayne LaPierre

"If these shootings continue unabated, soon we'll be out of whites!" - a moderate Republican

"Shootings? People are just prairie dogs to me anyway." - Rep. Louis Gohmert

"This country has to choose: the deaths of more innocent whites at the hands of the deranged, or the deaths of more de facto guilty blacks at the hands of law enforcement." - Ross Douthat

"I am living proof that gun control and big money do not have to be at odds with one another." - Michael Bloomberg

"I've got such a Control Boner." - Ray Kelly

"I wouldn't go to public school if you put a gun to my head." - Davis Guggenheim

"What's missing from the media circus is the gun's story. Where is its voice, its rights?" - Chuck Norris

"If there is no freedom to kill, then there is no freedom." - an AR-15

"I despair the conception of gun rights in terms of negative liberty, the highest expression of which is Security, total freedom from all forms of risk and danger. Real liberty is not freedom from, but freedom to. It is power, capacity. Only a human thinks that a bird is free from gravity, rather than that it possesses the power of flight. Against Security, which is nothing else but freedom from the World, we must oppose Terror, the freedom to make a World through violence." - Bobby Seale

"I have a certain admiration for murderers: they seize the freedom that the rest of us are too frightened or weak to seize. That is what makes these massacres perpetrated by the insane so tragic: there is no agency involved." -Ted Kaczynski

II. CLIFFS

"The further away it is, the more it looms." -  a dehydrated Barack Obama

 "It's like you work in a mine but your own shit is the mountain." - a rash-covered Congressional Page to an empty Chamber, C-Span

"What about this fiscal cliff? What the fuck are we going do? People could fall off and die."
"Senator Bilbo, during my time in Indonesia the people had a saying."
"What was that?"
"Jump."
 - Sen. Bacchus

"What has this Congress accomplished, Senator?"
"We stopped the damned cripples from walkin' over us!"
- Sen. James Mountain Inhofe 

"Plan B, okay, I keep my job?" - Boehner rallies the troops

"These men, doctor, their skin is foul and green and their eyes are sick as those who take drink."
"Yes, General, all these men have brucellosis..."
"Brucellosis! But only cows can get that!"
- Mitch McConnell and the Blue Moon Army fail to retake Western Kentucky

III. DREAMS

"What sound does the Night make when it overtakes the Day?" - Joel Osteen to a whetstone as he sharpens a knife lingeringly

"The sun hates us! Repent!"
"Speak not to me of piety! The sword!"
- David Brooks and Paul Krugman battle on the last iceberg 

"This world is a sea of blood..." - Bob Corker, dealing with his daughter's menarche

"What is the Republican war on women compared to Woman's war on Man?" - Rep. Strindberg, R-MI

"Every sperm is sacred." - Peter Jackson

"I'm like a red hot stone in a field of snow." - Jack Welch making snow angels

"Robots can function independently in conditions that no human body could bear, but I wonder if they do not feel the cold." - Kathryn Bigelow on the set of Drone

"Night strangles the day and cold reclaims the land. A bus hurtles through the black, trailed by bats at the woods close in. The headless horseman's one headlight jangles in the dark like the pen of fate writing on the wind..." - Scott Brown on a Peter Pan bus to Springfield, MA, talking aloud to no one, pressing his bags to his chest despite the empty overhead bins...

You Said the Union Forever

"Hey there, hick, you've got the right to work!" - MI State House Speaker Rep. Jase Bolger

"At long last, Michigan shall be free of the tyranny of the New Deal!" - MI State Rep. Earl Poleski

"Now listen here: As white men we have an understanding. We each look after our own slices of the pie. Mine is the factory, yours is the family." - MI State Rep. Mike Shirkey

"The People of Michigan clamor to be exploited. Who am I to deny them?" - Gov. Rick Snyder

"Now drink from it."
"I don't know..."
"Drink it!"
- Kristen Gillibrand makes Andrew Cuomo drink from Frak Pond

"Fuck the moon!" - Mitt tries tea

"Do you like boxing, sir?"
"Sure, I can always appreciate the methodical take down of another human being."
- Mitt Romney meets with President Obama in the Oval Office

"The most beautiful woman I have ever seen at a café is at this café." - Jay Carney, every time he goes to a café

"If an ugly man can overcome his self-hatred, nothing can stop him." – PSY

"By the time I'm fifty I won't be able to exist anywhere besides Davos." - Mark Zuckerberg

"Which Denzel Washington are you?"
"The bad one."
- Bradley Cooper lost in the University of Denzel Washingtons

"Norquist is a Zeta!"
"No, he's a fucking Cossack!"
"Naw, man, he's Black Irish."
 - debate among Republican Senate Pages

"Well I'm drunker than..."
"John Boehner! Haw haw haw haw!"
- President Obama interrupting Speaker Boehner, Cliff Talks

"Where's our damn leverage?! Ah!"
"Violence!"
- Kevin McCarthy pinned to the floor by Eric Cantor

"Have you ever kissed a man?"
"You mean, like, as a party trick?"
"No, I mean like..."
"Like...?"
"Never mind."
"..."
"Come here. I want to try something."
- Boehner and Cantor, sleepover

"Eric! All these books and all this collected knowledge...we couldn't hope to learn it all!" - John Boehner preparing to sacrifice Eric Cantor in the Mayan fashion, Library of Congress after hours

"I saw, finally, that I was crazy and my own mind could lie to me." -  Pete Peterson, CEO/cartoon cat

"I hear there's a country where people still smile at each other in the street and don't hide from the sun!"
"That's a Chinese lie!"
- Saxby Chambliss is thrown out of the Sterilization Committee

"We really wish people's reactions were slightly more festive, you know like it used to be with lynching." - the NRA

"These tragedies are something else. A newsman's goal here is to get in as close as he can to the heat, and maybe touch one of the families." - Roger Ailes

"It's not that there should be fewer guns, but that they should all be in the hands of ever more militarized police." -  Mayor Mike

"Looking back we can say that we really have learned nothing, or, rather, that we lack the will to do anything but learn." - Barack Obama

Zero Dark Thirty

"How quaint." - Xi Jinping

"Let's go see it together and jerk each other off, our dicks will be like the Twin Towers!" - Eric Holder to Alberto Gonzalez

"Is that supposed to be good? It has the Mother from Malick's Dream in it, she plays the Ginger Drone!" - Joe Biden

"A war film that does not take sides is simply an ode to the Warrior." - Kathryn Bigelow

"I think it's important that, before we get our knickers in a twist about Zero Dark Thirty, we remember that Hurt Locker was also a filthy piece of ideological shit. Say what you want about how 'ambiguous' it was, the only thing anyone remembers about it is Marines doing hard shit." - Roger Ebert

"It did not interest me, no. Why did not the filmmaker show us traditional Pakistani folk dancing? Why not stage the climactic assault with trained chimpanzees? Do SEALs dream, and, if so, then what of sharks? We may never know." - Werner Herzog

"Dare we dream of a golden day when the bestial War shall rule no more? But instead--the gentle Prince in the Hall of Brotherly Love in the City of Peace." - D. W. Bigelow

"Hurt Locker made selective use of celebrity actors to send the message that there are no heroes in war (except for filmmakers and, by analogy, those other off-stage producers of non-ideological, expertly crafted, technically-advanced, violent spectacles: politicians). By contrast Zero Dark Thirty features the thousand-watt superstar Jessica Chastain in the central role, symbolizing Bigelow herself, globe-hopping imperial adventuress, leader and nerve center of a group of specialist tough guys, shattering the glass ceiling of the male fantasy industry." - Maureen Dowd

"The most important part of Jessica's character is that you really want to fuck her. For that matter, every character has to be really fuckable. Because, while we're not trying to make an explicitly political film, it's important that all the people are attractive (but in a gritty way, symbolizing the ugly necessity of political violence) and the equipment is cool and everything is generally awesome." - Mark Boal

"Did your relationship with Mark Boal affect your work?"
"I don't see how, outside of the thrall of a passionate sexual relationship, we both could have committed so totally to the irrational intensity of war worship."
"What about torture?"
"Regarding the 'torture' 'controversy,' I think there's been a misunderstanding. When I said that we were taking a 'journalistic approach to film,' I did not mean that we were taking a journalistic approach to historical events, but to historical desires. What the film shows is not how things actually went down, but how we all dreamed they would."
"How do you explain your film having been met with such universal acclaim before even being released?"
"How do you explain the enthusiasm of a small child watching it's favorite movie for the hundredth time?"
"What's your next project?"
"Outer Heaven..."
- Charlie Rose, Kathryn Bigelow

"Can't fuck no more... a'tall...." - Matthew McConaughey as Gray Fox

Metal Gear Solid
dir. Kathryn Bigelow

starring

Keaunu Reevees        as        Solid Snake
Gary Busey .......................... the Colonel
Adrian Pasdar .................... Liquid Snake
Jessica Chastain ............................ Meryl
James Mountain Inhofe ... Revolver Ocelot
Anthony Mackie .......... the DARPA Chief
Dick Cheney ...... the ArmsTech President
Ralph Fiennes ................. Sec. of Defense
Jay Carney ................................... Otacon
Susan Rice .................................... Naomi
John Yoo .................................... Mei Ling
Chelsea Clinton ............................. Natasha
Matthew McConaughey ............ Gray Fox  
Vladimir Putin .................... Vulcan Raven
Marina Abramović ................... Sniper Wolf
Patrick Swayze's corpse .... Psycho Mantis
Meryl Streep ............................ Metal Gear

Martial Fucking Law

"Gentlemen do not read each others' mail." - David Petraeus to a highball

"To his great disappointment, the General's heart was not made of stone. Cupid's arrow had struck him with the devastating precision of a drone strike." - from Tampa Bay Fuck Den: History of an Indiscretion  by  Newt Gin Ginch

"Losing an election is worse than not makin' it with a lady."
"I don't understand."
- Dennis Quaid as Scott Brown as himself and Martin Short as David Petraeus 007 in Skyball

"I'm just glad that the scandal got so much attention while the rampant sexual abuse in the military continued, even at the highest levels, to be passed over in silence." - Jay Carney on Frost Over the World

"I believe there may be a force that binds people across great distances, something like psychism, yes." - Petraeus gets distracted at the Congressional hearing on the Benghazi attacks

"You were wild like chrysanthemum..." - Obama caressing Petraeus's face one last time

"Security doesn't just mean military security, it means energy security, economic security, sexual security." - Pat Robertson rides to Petraeus' defense

"It's more dignified to be doubled over, masturbating in the blue light of a computer screen than do what you have to do for sex these days." -  General John Allen

"Love is a struggle to become not the master but the slave." - Paula Broadwell

"The trouble with pornography is not that it substitutes images for bodies, it's that it substitutes images for fantasies." - Special Agent Frederick Humphries II

"One day a General found a woman on the subway whose face and body were gnarled with deformity. He took this woman by her knotted and cankered hands and told her that she was beautiful. The words stung her sharp as thorns. All the faces that ever puckered and winced upon sight of her flashed before her eyes. But not his face: he seemed to look not just past the forest of growths obscuring her eyes, but past her eyes and into her very soul. 'What do you mean?' she asked. He told her that he could see she possessed inner beauty, an inner beauty so great it surpassed even her outer hideousness, and that having discovered this inner beauty, he could never look away. With his power and his connections, he said, he could give her a body worthy of her inner radiance and make her the greatest beauty in the Homeland. That night he took her to her home and made love to her with such warmth and tenderness as she had never even known were possible. It made her feel like a real person. For months she endured the most painful operations, convalescing only just enough after each procedure to prepare for the next. And the General was there by her side the whole time, holding her hand, changing her bandages, cleaning her wounds, trimming her nails, brushing her hair, whispering in her ear, 'Not yet, my darling, not yet.' Until at last the day came when the bandages were removed, and they fell soundlessly at her side to reveal that she had indeed been transformed into the greatest beauty in the Homeland. That night the General took her to his home, an apartment with glass walls perched high atop a gleaming, steel tower that could not but remind her of the surgeon's instruments. And there he ravished her, as conqueror ravishes a city. His lovemaking (if it can be called that) was brutal. All of his tenderness, all of his love and warmth were gone. She was his thing now. She felt fear, then terror, then panic, and finally numbness. She turned cold felt as though she was watching the act, in all its violence, from outside her own, now unrecognizable body. When she woke, the General was gone. She knew that she would never see him again. Her reflection stared at her in the mirror. She tried to remember their first night together, but couldn't. She thought of smashing the mirror and slicing open a vein. She didn't have the strength." - from the diary of Jill Kelley

"The birth is over. It's a war criminal." -  Dr. John Boehner

The New Disorder

"You must choose: strangulation at the filthy, groping hands of fanatics or cold, precise, non-ideological death from sixty thousand feet."
- Barack Obama to a roomful of College Democrats or Pakistanis

"The Church is Evil, yes! But answer me this: What Knowledge would you have of Evil without the teachings of the Church? Who taught you to recognize Evil? Who gave you the name by which you call it and the moral faculties to discern it? The Church! It is not you that condemns the Church but the Church that condemns itself and, in so doing, reasserts itself as Absolute." - Cardinal Dolan

"Occupation? That sounds costly."
"No, we just wall them off and rain down fire every time we have an itch."
"Ugly stuff. But the wogs only understand force."
- Winston Churchill's ghost visiting Ehud Barak in his dreams

"Do you think the Wall would be more effective if it were decorated with skulls?"
"Do you mean like Día de los Muertos?"
"Somebody get this asshole out of here."
- Benjamin Netanyahu, Charlie Rose

"Sorry, scabs, I'm Pharaoh now." - Anubis sends word to Gaza from President Morsi

"Given that the attack occurred simultaneously with protests around the globe, it might have been reasonable to posit, as only one initial, working hypothesis among many, that the attack may have been part of this global eruption of protest. Yet it was precisely because this was such a temptingly reasonable hypothesis that it had to be rejected. What's important is not whether the attack was spontaneous, premeditated, or some opportunistic combination of the two, but whether we have the resolve to label any and all offenses against our Empire and its glorious Reign of Peace as 'terrorism.' It's not a question of conclusions but of premises. If you will indulge me in a a somewhat academic digression, to call the attack 'terrorism' has no value as a descriptive or 'constative' speech act. It is instead a 'performative' speech act by which the speaker pledges his fealty to the Empire and patches the hole in our worldview left by rocket fire."
- David Petraeus, Congressional hearing on the Benghazi attack

"There's one thing we've got, and that is: a lot." - Xi Jinping

"I had a nightmare that no one was oppressed and we only had millions of dollars!" - Wen Jiabo to his wife

"Finally, I can breathe!" - Hu Jintao's hair

Kick Them When They're Down

"Isn't that tornado beautiful?"
"We're going to die here, aren't we?"
- Mitt and Tagg driving through rural Wisconsin to return unused victory fireworks

"Maybe my best years are behind me...."
"At least you can look forward to your chest flesh getting soft, hahahahaha!!!!"
- Justin Bieber and Kurt Russell, set of The Man Without Qualities

"What did I do to deserve this?!"
"Everything."
 - Cardinal Timothy Dolan and Pope Benedict Ratzinger
 
"I'm never going to get laid again am I?"
"Not with that weird and stupid penis, haw haw haw!!!!"
 - Rob Lowe and Scott Brown, 1988 Democratic National Convention in Atlanta

"God, Dad, what the hell have you done?!" - Tagg finds Mitt lying in a pile of discarded two-liters

"When we do cross-fit together and do the power lunges you look so damn foolish it's all I can do to keep from shitting myself.." - Janna Ryan to Paul Ryan

"Come on, baby, it feels nice." - Ann Coulter cutting a line of meth on her stomach for Tagg

"The first time we kissed I remember when that piece of apple fell from your mouth into mine. You really damned all my dreams to Hell." - Allen West to the golden skull he knows only as Nirgal

"At least elephants recognize themselves when they look in the mirror." - Karl Rove on Crossroads donors

"At times like this, what can I do but turn to my faith, which I know is only more alienating." - Mitt/Mike Huckabee

"That guy's a fucking psycho. You know I think he really does wish Obama the best." - Mitch McConnell

"You should really spay that thing."
"Get fucked."
- Bob Barker and Fmr. Sen. Kay Bailey-Hutchinson walking their dogs, Gulf Shores

"I want an MRI!"
"And I want you to take a damn shower."
- Harrison Ford coming out of a 'hash trip' and stumbling upon his family

"Democracy is total bullshit but we could easily handle it better than Florida." - Raul Castro

"I bet you've got that sweet gig ready for me now, eh?"
"Oh yeah, I proclaim you honorary Drone Pilot, haw haw haw!"
- The President brings Sen. John Kerry to tears

"How about we'll abolish welfare, but we'll also abolish the police?" - Chuck Schumer conducting the Grand Bargain

"I would have thought that, of all positions in the American government, the Director of the C.I.A. would be free of expectations of ethical conduct." - Daniel Craig

"I need to take this time to spend more time with my family because they hate me." - David Petraeus

"In celebration of our democracy and of our leader's glorious reelection, all detainees have been sentenced to a hundred victory laps around the compound!" - Joint Task Force Guantanamo commander Rear Admiral David B. Woods

"Hell, I'm so happy, I might even give them trials!" - Eric Holder

"I keep them here to remind me of the heavy responsibilities of leadership and the thrill of murder." - Obama explaining why the Oval Office is lined with photos of drone strike casualties

"The path forward is uncertain, but the potential for regression is infinite." - Jay Carney

Space Clinton Wins the Election!

"Love is just a moment!" - Space Clinton

"Everybody to the Grotto party!" - Subspace Biden

"Vote with your limbs!" - bandito Paul Krugman to the Anarcho-Arthropod Assembly

"A vote for Obama is a vote for whiskey and lawyers!" - Harry Reid, firing a silver pistol on the Strip, calling up the Vote

"There is no 'should' or 'should not.' There is only the pleasure of experience." - David Plouffe, placing your hand on the Lever

"The application of brutal political force can be a terrible and wondrous thing. I hate the drones, too, and I can't see them, but still I know they are beautiful." - Tammy Baldwin, victory speech

"We who are about to vote salute you!" - the Last Whites to the Emperors Koch

"Any predictions tonight, Wolf?"
"I see a sinkhole of vast size and strange shape in Omaha."
"What's at the bottom?"
"Diane Sawyer."
- Brian Williams, Wolf Blitzer

"I offer up this protest vote to you, O State of New York, in willing recognition of my own powerlessness!" - Donald Trump

"You can't throw a brick through a hologram." - Glenn Greenwald gives up

"Four hundred more years!" - Predator Drone XF-3897

"You made this possible!" - POTUS Obama to the Space Locusts

"I cannot tell you how relieved I am." - Guantanamo Bay detainee Shaker Aamer

"Ladies, gentleman, tessellated spheres..." - Shadow Candidate Romnoid, concession speech to Portal PAC

"Nothing happened tonight. These feelings are a simulation." - sexbot Paul Ryan

"I am the batman!" - Herman Cain steals the scene

"I wish I coulda been in, like, a Japanese hoverbike gang, you know?" - Ron Paul

"You kept me out of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, now I've killed your boy with my knife." - Sen.-elect Elizabeth Warren to Sen. Mitch McConnell

"I've seen things you people wouldn't believe... PAC-ships on fire at Bohemian Grove... I've seen the sweat glisten on diabetics dancing in the darkness at Occupy Gate... All these moments will be lost in time, like votes in Maine..." - Tagg shuts down

Sandy's Back in Town

"We are the Lost Battalion!"
- an army of NYC rats burns Toronto on the road to Sudbury

"You ever fucked on a sandbag bed?"
- Al Roker to a stranded Charlie Rose

Millions Feign Disappointment at Being Unable to Return to Work

"Evacuation is unpatriotic." - Wen Jiabao

Gears of Capital Grind to Halt, Manhattan at Mercy of Occupy

"In Bloomberg's New York, even the hurricanes arrive on time."
- an admiring David Brooks, Bloomberg's Ark

"Gov. Chris Christie has called for a 'Placating Sacrifice' of Bruce Springsteen to Sea and the Sleeping and Ceaseless One.'"
- Brett Baier, Atlantic City Whirlpool

Soaked New England Takes Drunken Swing at Mid-Atlantic

"I saw mounted police, thrown through the air like so many dandelions."
- Rutger Hauer on the Winds

"Distribute the horse meat to the poor!"
- Mayor Bloomberg's last order before the sinking of City Hall

The Mode of Reproduction

"Only by socializing the means of production can we achieve a truly rational mode of production. Women, in their very persons, are both the means of production and the owners of the means of production. Their organs are constant capital, and the lovemaking labor of men is variable capital. Just as workers must wrest control of the means of production away from their owners, the capitalists, and convert them from private property into social property, so men must expropriate women's bodies and put them in the service of society as a whole."
- from Ain't I a Hick?: The Autobiography of Richard Mourdock, ghostwritten by Lynn Vincent

Freedom Voices

"I'm cool, and I'm bipartisan, man, don't worry. I'm going to cover the whole gamut of foreign policy and I'm going to shoehorn a musical into this thing." - Bob Schieffer

"If you get nervous just pretend my face is everywhere." - Biden calms the POTUS

"Governor Romney is going to make a lot of claims tonight. He's going to claim he played clavinet on Miles Davis's Get Up With It. Well, he didn't." - POTUS

"I hope everyone at home is listening because I just heard the President of this country claim we have not always been at war with Oceania!" - Mitt Romney

"The Chinese don't work for you, loser, they work for me!"
"Everybody shut the fuck right up!"
- Bob Schieffer sets the tone early

"Cracked. Whipped. Buzzed. Glazed. Burnt. Sawed-off. It was a sexy fucking time!" - Harry Reid

"Mr. President, Governor, if an unmanned machine kills an entire wedding party in the flats of Yemen, does it make a sound?" - Bob Schieffer

“Look: we all want to be the bad guy here.”
“I agree with the President. The American Empire is indispensable."
-  Obama and Romney having tea with Col. Blimp

"Governor Romney doesn't like Argo because he doesn't like its criticism of US support for the Shah. But the Governor doesn't appreciate what this film is really about, which is, letting a broad, moviegoing public fantasize about Iranians as one-dimensional villains." - Obama

“Whether one candidate wins or the other is not going to decide whether there is war with Iran. I will decide whether there is war with Iran.” – Bibi Netanyahu

"HAW HAW HAW chemical warfare!!!!" - Obama wins the debate

“What about drones: should they be allowed to vote?” – Bob Schieffer

“The more you tighten your grasp, Governor, the more star systems will slip through your fingers.” – Princess Malia

"You don't think I control the Hornets Nest? I control the Hornets Nest." And with an inhuman wail, the Governor summoned the Hornets, which blotted out the sky.

"Whoever controls the spice, controls the galaxy."
- Bob Schieffer interrupting Mitt Romney on Latin America

“Why did you do it?”
“What?”
“Bring a child into this world. What gives you the right?”
- Tagg takes Dad’s loss a little hard

“Oh, yeah, we all love teachers.” – Bill Clinton

Table Scraps from the Beggar's Banquet

"Every weekend is a free fall." - a young Adorno in the Potsdamer Platz

"If God wanted us to love each other, why did he make hate feel so good?" - James Carville

"Oh, the petty age we live in, with its petty wars and its petty struggles, its people who fight for an uglier world." - Hillary Clinton, idly overturning chess pieces while gazing out an airship window

"To attain the minor mythos of the brat is the chief social, political, and lifestyle goal of our generation: the individual entering a world of stasis that reacts only to her, like a stone thrown into a pond." - Harmony Korine

"Mother, they're all dead!"
"Shh, it's all right, son. I killed them."
- Jimmy Carter, Lillian Gordy Carter

"Poverty doesn't make people into criminals. People become criminals because they have criminal natures. Poverty just limits their opportunities to express their criminal natures in socially legitimate ways, like becoming cops, prosecutors, judges, bosses, managers, bankers, financiers, consultants, politicians, teachers, or the heads of stable, nuclear families." - Bill Cosby

"The skin barely hangs on to these people." - Elizabeth Warren, touring the Senate Chamber and suddenly regretting everything

"What was that beautiful silence? All the gears of power grinding to a halt? It was a dream." - Charlie Rose racing out of his tent in the middle of the night, Linville Gorge, NC

"I'd rather kill myself than play the cards I have left." - a good idea

Electoral Abyss

"The Blood Agenda is premised on the view that America is in a Galt-esque death spiral and that our portion of the pie must be maintained against that of the Bums at all costs." - Glenn Hubbard, leadership seminar

"It's a bizarre cultural niche which this document occupies. Every evil young man likes it before he even begins it, undeterred by the warnings of those who have gone before. 'I am made of a different sort of stuff,' he tells himself and pursues his death with the flames of optimism licking at his heels. Make no mistake: this document was made to harm you alone and the fact that it has undone others should not concern you. Still, you will die." - Paul Krugman on the Ryan Budget 

"I want Obama to win, but I'm not going to vote for him--I'm casting a protest vote for Breanna Manning. If Obama loses, am I to blame? If he wins, do I get to be glad? These are the mysteries of our religion, democracy." - Anderson Cooper

"Ugly people just have the silly habit of doing ugly things." - Newt Gin Ginch casting a faithless elector vote for Barack Obama, breaking an Electoral College tie in GA

"You're not watching the debate?"
"I don't need to watch the debates to know that Barack Obama is black."
- Jonathan Franzen, Michael Chabon

Q: There are three superstitious words in the following sentence: "If one of these candidates wins, the world will get worse." What are the superstitious words?
A: "Wins," "world," and "worse."

"They're so perfect! But how do I know they're the same dollar bills?!?!" - Rex Sinquefield feverishly recounting his money every night

"It's a small world of evil whites." - David Mamet running into Kathryn Bigelow at Pissant Farm, Bohemian Grove

"Todd Palin is part Eskimo, he pisses in the snow and every time it spells TREASON!" - Ted Stevens' ghost

"He's just a hot, fresh honky. Like, straight out of the oven." - Charles Krauthammer spies Jeb Bush passing by, Camp Koch, Bohemian Grove

"I don't know. I don't think it's going to work out."

"What do you mean? There's untold thousands in our personal republics! If you wish to bring them to war on a lark for a thin line in Akron, I'm all the more for it!"

- Charles and David Koch

"What are the Koch's but children who use improper wiping tactics?" - Bill Clinton, Ogles Water Park, Pigeon Forge, TN

"The barbed wire slip 'n' slide! They shut it down after that big lawyer from Gainesville came to town. You ever seen her: Sweet Gaine? I mean have you set your feet upon Gainesville's earth?" - Marco Rubio telling stories of home to keep warm on the Hyperdimensional Front

"I just want to go to sleep, I just want it to be tomorrow, WHY CAN'T I FUCKING FALL ASLEEP?!" - Mitt Romney, 8:00 p.m., November 6, 2012

"The most underestimated force is sheer inertia." - Hillary Clinton, 2016

"Let his timbre ring on endlessly in the halls of violence and power!"
"Uhhh--Kill them all!"
- President Michelle Rhee, Supreme Cyborg Justice Barack Obama

"It's all going to end up in Leftist didacticism and flames, death and a thousand-year tornado in the flats." - the Editors, debating whether to accept funding from Independence PAC

"To serve evil you must embrace silk."- Xi Jinping

Pigeons de la guerre

"The carrier pigeon seemed to pass through the Portal unscathed, only to suddenly molt and vomit to death, agonizingly, thirteen hours later."
- Franz Mesmer

"There is no Other Side!" - Céline returns home from boarding school

"It's hard to tell where hack begins and nihilism ends." - Emil Cioran

"It's not the death you die, it's the death you live." - Leos Carax

"What happens when you confuse love with death?"
"You become immortal."
- Woody Allen, Carla Bruni

"Sex is not a democracy." - DSK

"In any war between the civilized man and the savage, support the savage." - Deleuze

"We are shadow men, adrift in aether." - Françoise Hollande

In Which Love Conqures All

"The MTA makes nihilists of us all."

"I thought only liberals got in trouble for sex."

"Be my founding crime." - the proposal

"I'm sorry, sir, but the King's College doesn't appreciate this kind of negative publicity. As a Christian institution we find these matters are handled best when they are covered up for decades and disposed of with a large cash settlement." - Andy Mills

"These damn conservatives breed together!" - James Carville

"The successful polemicist wisely renders himself constitutionally incapable of Eros." - Michael Moore

"Who needs an analyst when Facebook does all the work for you?" - Theodor Reik

I Spit on Your Grave

"He would do anything to stay in the limelight." - Robert Evans

"Looking back on his life, we can see he really changed nothing." - Bill Clinton stopping at a Dunkin Donuts, Rhode Island

"As his fellow unjustifiably respected 'moderate,' I can say that he will not be missed." - Sen. John McCain

"Sen. Specter did more for our Commonwealth than any man since Franklin. It is therefore with a heavy heart that, because the Senator's corpse was unable to produce photo ID at the Philadelphia County morgue, I hereby deprive him of the rites of mourning and internment and condemn his body to rot in the sun." - Gov. Tom Corbett

"I say let's get liquored up and go to the Cherry Blossom Festival!" - Alan Arkin as Arlen Specter

A Fate Worse than Death, or, Youth

"I hate life." - the real Paul Ryan

"I'd rather my generation had been Lost than Hopeless." - Danny Tamberelli

My life is already over
yet my body persists
against my will
a being of pure regret.
- Kris Kristofferson, To the Wall

"Everyone I know is depressed, and I can't imagine them ever not being that way. Are we the first generation to be like this?"
"No, I hear in Japan it's been like this for a while."
- Daniel Radcliffe and a digitally rendered friend

"If I don't have the power to destroy everything, I can at least resolve to contribute nothing positive." - an Editor searching unlocked houses for Seconal

"Therefore, I put it to the Committee that the human experiment has run its course--there is no point in carrying it on any longer--and that this generation should be the last." - Thorbjørn Jagland

Dilbert Goes to Hell

"At work, I play Marnie Stern to get pumped up when I'm tired, and Bach to cool my nerves when I feel like killing my boss. What a contemptible betrayal of these great works of art." – Adorno

“Every one thinks that their office is the worst. They are right.” – Stalin

"I mean, my god, I just can't do this anymore." - a drone pilot suffering button fatigue

"Just as the contemplation of suicide gets one through many a bad night, so the thought of quitting gets one through many a Wednesday." - Nietzsche

"Nothing more eloquently expresses the spirit of our times than the refrain of workers, heard from Wal-Mart to Google, that unions are 'not for this company.'" - Romney

"In the future, there won't even be police officers, just managers." - Ray Kelly

"If only I were just a bad man, if only this were just an evil place... But no... Everywhere is like this, and I am every man." - Bloomberg

“An office worker is in his backyard. Usually he does overtime, but today he went home early. Despite the mounting papers on his desk. Despite the martial advance of deadlines. He went home early for no particular reason. He sits in his backyard, looking at the light of the setting sun on the trees, watching the wind in the movements of the leaves. He listens to the chirping of concealed birds. The creaking of a red fence. The pleasantly muffled roar of the nearby highway. He can shift his attention from one sensation to the next with the precision of a motion picture. Cinema is a way of being in the world, he thinks. Of looking at it, inhabiting it, moving through it. A plane unzips the sky overhead.” - Barack Obama, the Moviegoing Diaries

Bronze Medal Match

"We'll begin with a series of increasingly offensive floats, then a race over muddy lands, and finally a traditional satyricon." - Martha Raddatz

"No one cares about this structural shit. It's all about indirectly electing their dictator every four years or playing 'go team' with some shithead on cable TV." - Joe Biden

"I support Mitt Romney because I truly believe the President should be a person." - Paul Ryan

"He's like the Irish McEnroe!" - Matt Rhoades

"Ryan had no shadow when he came to the City, and when he left at dusk all the children followed him." - Bernie Hunstad, Mayor of Danville

"On the one hand, don't let the best become the enemy of the better. On the other hand, I am the enemy." - Joe Biden, Anarchists Anonymous

"Make the ants fight more and more for less and less!"
"Yes! Hiss!"
- David Koch and an anonymous blonde dressed as Gila monsters

"I am the Berlusconi of Bethany Beach." - Joe Biden

"I'm not exactly into decadence, but I'll suck on a good pair of arms." – Paul Ryan

“The flesh is in!” – David Plouffe

“Sexy sexy sexy fuckin whacked out and sexy as hell!” – Wolf Blitzer, unable to believe the feeling he’s having right now

“Luv is real, I've felt it. It’s a pill you can take, John Boehner put one on my tongue in Berlin and I woke up in Utrecht!” - Paul Ryan

“Ryan’s a chick, man, he’s a weird chick!” - Chris Matthews

"On the one hand, I want to say that we are all bisexual in the kind-of-Freudian sense that we are all fundamentally sexual creatures, that sex and desire are always there, lurking somewhere in every relationship we have to other humans; that we possess sexual urges far in excess of the what mere reproduction requires, urges that seek out ever new pleasures, ever more challenging and ecstatic forms of expression, fundamentally indifferent to the gender or even species of our sexual partners. Then again, I also want to say that there is no such thing as a bisexual because, I think, at the end of the day, whether as a result of our genes or just of personal experience, everybody has a preference." - Joe Biden wins the debate

In Which Things Get Loose

Mittens wants to fuuuuuck!!!

"Did you know that 47% of Americans don't pay taxes? Isn't that outrageous!"
"No, 47% of Americans don't pay federal income taxes. But more than half of those people do pay federal payroll taxes. And of the 18% of Americans who don't pay any federal taxes, a lot still pay state and local taxes, and they all pay sales taxes."
"But why can't we just cut them loose anyways?"
"Because they'd die."
"So what?!"
"We need them as consumers."
"Fuck!"
- President Romney, talked down from pushing the Button by Bill Clinton

"Fucking work, damn it!" – Willard Romulus Erectus Abundus, Arachnid Emperor of the Star Children of the Salt Lake, scouring the City

"You people can't even fucking cook!" – Queen Ann addresses the masses

Romney Urges Cautious Tone with Portal Emissary

"Five Hour Energy is fucking holy and a sacrament." - Romulus banishes Tagg from the Suite

"He loves his family? Who gives a damn, 'he loves his family.' Lots of bad people love their families. That's why they're bad." - James Carville

"Unleash the Ryan swarm upon Iowa." - Romulus at the bridge of the Rafalca

Biden Challenges Ryan to Trial By Cobra

"Congressman Ryan, are those leg warmers?"
"Yeah, I can't stand this early autumn weather. Hot balls, cold feet."
"You're so Gen X."
- John Boehner and Paul Ryan jogging on Shepherd Skull Road, D.C.

"One day this will all be ash."
"What's that Mr. President?"
"I said, thank you for having me!
"Ha, ha, ha!"
- Romulus on Spaceship Leno

'It doesn't have to be this way! No one has to die!"
"HAW haw haw! Wrong."
- President Marco Rubio calling former President Obama as the Portal widens

"I can see the sex horizon."
“You fool, the boat has capsized! We’re all going to die!”
- Capt. Joe Biden and Cabin Boy Jay Carney on the ceiling of the Poseidon ballroom

Fuck Voting

"At long last, the regression I’ve been looking for..." - Chris Matthews, pulling the lever

"Some shit you've just got to eat, but that doesn't mean you have to say thank you." - prominent voter George Clooney

"We serve the master we deserve, as long as we serve him." - Hugo Chavez

“Same shit, different fan.” - Big Bird

"It's like spilling your seed some place dry.” -  Kelsey Grammer 

"Presidential politics is like an ex I claim to be over, all the while ruthlessly stalking on Facebook." - Janeane Garofalo

"Sometimes the palette does not deserve to be cleansed." - John Malkovich

"It isn't worth trying to fix any of this." - Barack Obama, helping Sasha with her homework

"It's much more honest to do nothing than to engage in the illusion of doing something, to embrace your own powerlessness rather than make believe you have a say in anything." - Jimmy Carter, burning his ballot

"In every critique there is defeat. Nothing condemns the Democratic Party more than articulate denunciations of the Republican Party. Can you imagine takedowns of the Democrats as clear and eviscerating as those of the Republicans that appear in every center-left paper in the country on a weekly basis? Where would the ideological substance be? The Democrats simply are not there. One only says of them: they hold us back." - bandito Paul Krugman

"The Democrats are like an old girlfriend: I avoid them, I can't understand how I ever loved them, and to think of them fills me with shame, anger, resentment, humiliation... and yet I can't help still being a little sexually attracted to them. That's why Obama's performance in the debate was so disappointing: my dick didn't perk up once. To have lost even that! And you know, I was close to breaking my pledge to sit this election out. I'd been thinking: it's been dicey for Obama lately, he might actually lose, maybe I better vote. If only he could have made me feel the heat, one last time! To see the utter mediocrity of the System personified in its Leader was too much for me. And that's how I realized I was a Stalinist." - Wallace Shawn

"Voting is a renewal of vows with the State. It is a drama that we play out for ourselves, through which we create an imaginary relationship to the rest of society and pledge our fealty to it. The actual choice of candidate is irrelevant: what's important is that you give your consent to be ruled. Voting has of no practical significance whatsoever except as ritual, but this is nothing to sneeze at, for today, more than ever, society relies on ritual and superstition to hold together. Magical thinking is the last line of defense against the unrelenting corrosion of social life by capital. But whereas a true 'a line of defense' is intended to keep the enemy out, the function of democracy, nationalism, and other myths is to regulate our exposure to the enemy, to make sure that its raids are never so devastating that we can't rebuild and be raided again, to ensure our willing participation in our own exploitation. Without myths, there is no faith in the State; without our faith, the State loses its monopoly on violence; without State violence, capital loses its most enthusiastic and reliable enforcer. This is why I think it is important not to vote: only by giving up can we win." - Erik Prince

"The standard is: How can you confront your historical moment head on?" - Daniel-Day Lewis as Abraham Lincoln trying to decide on a write-in candidate

Never Enough Preparation

 "I am blissed out and sexed up!" - Jim Lehrer, back from the Mist

"It's a damn pageant!" - Mitt breaks out, Film # 2642 

"But with the blast shield down I can't see a thing!" - Paul Ryan swatting at coconuts with a broomstick, Margaritaville, Boca Raton

"One thing people don't know about me is that I can sing like a professional honky tonk star." - Mitt Romney

"Listen, the only way we'll be ready is if we do this naked." - Paul Ryan to the Team, while prepping at Beaver Creek

"I want to do it. I'm going to do it."
"You can't do that."
"What's he want to do?"
- Joe Biden telling David Plouffe and Robert Gibbs that he's bringing a sword onstage

"I'm not like other candidates. I'm outside the sexual mainstream." - Paul 'Atlas' Ryan in gold body paint

"Time makes losers of us all." - John Kerry as Mitt Romney on agricultural policy

"'LOL' gives the wheezing hack of stale breath hissing through my tobacco-stained teeth too much credit, but rest assured: I am laughing." - Sheldon Adelson, Town Hall Twitter Debate

"This is not my daughter." - Barack Obama with a thousand-yard stare

"Whatever, the NFL is for homosexuals." - Mitt Romney loses the first Presidential Debate

Useless, useless...

"I hate this disgusting, fetid puke-shit world, but most of all I hate me." - Sheldon Adelson

"God doesn't care if you're sorry." - Joseph Ratzinger abolishing confession

"In every choice there is a thousand murders." - Sandra Fluke looking back and forth between small bottles of Jim Beam and Jack Daniels in a Charlotte Grand Hyatt mini-fridge

"For any function, the derivative of every peak or nadir is zero, which, applied to life, means that there are any number of times when you are literally going nowhere. You could just get off then and kill yourself at no loss to yourself or to the world." - Malcolm Gladwell, TED Talks, Hell

"They say that when you get older, you stop caring about living life to its fullest and are simply glad to be alive, but that's always the way it's been for me." - Robert Pattinson

"God, you're right, the mid 20's are total shit. We're socially redundant, over-educated, under-skilled, overgrown children. We're fucked in a more complex and comfortable way than the poor, but whereas the poor have at least always known they were fucked, we're only discovering this now." - James Franco

"Laundry is the brunch of chores."
"Why do you say that?"
"Because I'm drunk."
- John Boehner, Mitch McConnell

"Am I going to die right here?" - Rand Paul in line at the post office

"All this stupid fucking small talk. It's all about sex. A discomfort swells up in your disgusting, animal body, and the only way to relieve it is to fuck. Otherwise, you wouldn't have anything to say to anyone. So be shameless. You're an animal. Treat yourself like one."- Friday Night

"There's no right way to talk to a woman." -   Charlie Rose

"People see me in my jeans, and they notice. Can you fucking handle that?" - postcard from Mitt that caused his first breakup with Ann, Bloomfield Hills, MI, 1965

"I'm sorry I spooked you. It was just so weird." -  Jimmy Carter after taking off his Jimmy Carter mask while making love to Paul Ryan in Jimmy Carter mask

"Women's bodies belong to society." - Christine O'Donnell in beak mask

"I saw an Ancient Sex God rise from the sea and fuck a mountain..." -  Marc Leder

"I don't get it, how does it work? Like, do fat people get off eating together?" - Naomi Wolfe

"There is no substitute for love in this life. And if you haven't got love, what have you got?" - Vladimir Putin, photo-op

"People talk about a woman's beauty 'fading,' but beauty is the fade, the incandescent flash of youth being burned up. Beauty is Time realized as self-destruction." - Lindsay Lohan

"When your face finally goes, it's fucking over." - Joan Rivers

"I look at a woman like you and all I see is wreckage." - Charlie Rose to Nicole Kidman

"Look at this. This isn't like the economy. This can't be fixed. This is irreversible." - Paul Krugman to his naked body in a mirror

"You must at least find it reassuring to look at me."
"Why?"
"Because even if you're not beautiful, you know that beauty is possible."
"Your beauty is hideous."
"All beauty is hideous."
- Megyn Kelly, James Carville

"One of the greatest lies perpetrated by stories, especially cinema (for it is a lie best illustrated through the gaze), is that the person you love from afar will one day return your love. This is a lie because the very fact that you love from afar already means that you have not and will not ever act on your love, that your love will never be returned, that, in truth, you do not want it to be." - Jennifer Love Hewitt

"The experience of walking down a city sidewalk is utterly transformed by prolonged sexual deprivation. You have to work constantly to repress the sexual criminal inside you. It's one of the most stressful parts of never getting laid." -  a scientist

"That's it, I'm converting to Islam, anything to give meaning to my involuntary chastity and compulsion to protest." - The Editor

"Man, I haven't gotten laid in two and a half years. Do you have any idea what that does to you? It's so bad, there are works of art about it. (See Le Rayon vert, dir. Eric Roehmer, 1986. Whatever, by Michel Houellebecq, 1994.) Aside from making you generally depressed, irritable, hateful, and self-loathing, it puts you in the triple bind of (1) making you need, more than anything in this world, to get laid, (2) being so terrified of sex and so out of practice in the game of seduction that you neither want to nor would be capable of having sex, unless some truly powerful and exceptional emotion, namely love, were at play, but it won't be because (3) you're so physically and emotionally distressed all the time that you are incapable of romantic chemistry, much less real, human intimacy. And, I mean, probably the ugliest part of it all having to accept that, unless you are really some exceptional freak, this is probably just a phase, it will come to an end: you will get laid, it won't be pleasant, you won't get anything out of it, and you'll no longer be entitled to the sense of superiority that your sexual isolation afforded you." - Oliver Platt, the Drought Diary

"I would fuck anything right now." - Bill Clinton sleeplessly watching Real Housewives reruns

40 Oscars and a Mule

"Much has been said of the valor of the Southern gentleman, general. But men of flesh are nothing next to an Iron Lady." - Admiral Farragut

"I'm a fucking artist!" - John Wilkes Booth

"Erm... Tit... Big ones..." - Gen. Grant, high on whiskey, explaining the battle plan for Vicksburg

"That glow on the horizon... What the hell is that? Is dawn breaking to the west?! Is this the End Times?!"
"It's the end times, all right. But it's no dawn. It's Sherman."
-  Paula Deen and Rand Paul abandoning the Biscuit Factory

"One night with that crazy bitch is enough to make any man pine for dick." - Lincoln, Scores, Antietam

"People were just uglier then." - Jackie Earle Haley

"There will be wood!" - Daniel Day-Lewis as Lincoln as John Kerry

"This will do for Marfan syndrome what War Horse did for war!" - George Lucas

"Lucifer's beard!" - historian Sean Wilentz having a stroke at the premier

"This picture is a product of painstaking historical research. We're going to show you the real Lincoln--his early days as a lawyer, the Douglas debates, the Gettysburg address, the suspension of habeas corpus, Mary Todd's illness, his romantic friendship with Joshua Speed, his bout of small pox, the coke, the duel with Marx, the blood rites, cannibalism--all of it!" - Steven Speilberg

Lincoln
Directed by Luc Besson

Starring:

Liam Neeson ................................. Abraham Lincoln
Alan Rickman ................................ Andrew Johnson
Bruce Willis ................................. William H. Seward
Sam Rockwell .................................. Jefferson Davis
Kevin Kostner ..................................... Walt Whitman
Laurence Fishburne ........ Frederick Douglass Kenobi
Julia Roberts ............................. the Statue of Liberty
Paul Giamatti ............................................ Karl Marx
Marion Cotillard ....... the ghost of Stonewall Jackson
John Cusack .......................... Harriet Beecher Stowe
Jean Reno ............................................. Maximilian I
Hugh Grant ...................................... Lord Palmerston
Paul Krugman ................................. Ulysses S. Grant
Matthew McConaughey ...................... Robert E. Lee
Bryan Cranston ............. William Tecumseh Sherman
Nicolas Cage ............................... John Wilkes Booth
Meryl Streep ....................................... the Merrimack

Violence Gone By

"Political violence is like art: you can't please everyone." - bandito Paul Krugman

"It's not opportunity who knocks, but you who's got to knock on opportunity's door, leave a flaming bag of shit on the stoop, and hit him with a black jack while he's trying to put out the fire." - whoever the hell planned the Benghazi attack

"Well, at least some one still believes in nothing." - Jimmy Carter, falling asleep to the nightly news

"We are the mob we are looking for." - Chicago students

"Problems do not have solutions, but consummations." - the Prophet

"I'm not opposed to violence. I'm opposed to poor targets." - Larry Summers, to his belly button

"Do you want to go through your life regretting all the skulls you didn't smash?" - Ray Kelly

"Occupy is so last year." - the Wall Street Journal

"I suppose you could call Occupy a 'fad,' yes, in the sense that the Beanie Babies craze was suppressed by state violence." - Jean Quan on the Today Show

"Among the reasons given by the press on the anniversary of Occupy for the latter's 'failure' are that it was too inclusive, that it wasn't inclusive enough, that it didn't have demands, that its demands were too broad, that it didn't have a message, that it's message was mixed, that it's message was too extreme, that it didn't have leaders, that its leadership was ineffective, that it was just a bunch of feckless middle-class kids upset that their liberal arts degrees were useless, that what began as a protest by respectable middle-class people was hijacked by poor people and freaks and anarchists, that it was not mainstream enough, that it became too popular too fast, and more. The message is: Occupy had only itself to blame, by whatever rationalizations necessary. Conspicuously absent from these discussions have been the simple facts, available to anyone with a memory, that Occupy encampments throughout the country were raided in the middle of the night and forcibly evacuated by militarized police forces; that this wave of evacuations was the result of a coordinated effort by municipal governments around the country, facilitated by federal authorities, to end Occupy once and for all; that activists were subject to beatings, harassment, surveillance, and false arrests, sometimes in their own homes; that journalists who attempted to cover protests were regularly arrested; and that since the end of the encampments, the authorities have done their best to actively suppress any form of vigorous political expression before it even starts. I suppose it's possible that the failure of the press to mention any of these facts might reflect a kind of casual Nietzscheanism on their part--like, whoever allows himself to be whipped, deserves to be whipped. Yet, though I would welcome such a perspective, I doubt it." - Lloyd Blankfein

"My child asked me where Kabul was today. I told her it was in Afghanistan and asked her why she wanted to know. She said that another bus blew up there today. It really seemed to affect her."
"Children have such active imaginations."
"They certainly do. Anyways, she asked me why buses blew up in Kabul, and I told her it was because we had created a power vacuum. A power vacuum?, she said. You mean like the Roomba?"
"Oh, isn't that adorable!"
"I told her a power vacuum is when no one's in charge. We kicked out the government of Afghanistan, but we didn't take the measures necessary to ensure that the new government could really control the whole country. That's a power vacuum. Why did we leave a power vacuum?, she asked. Why, aren't you a Curious Kate!, I said. We left a power vacuum because our liberal principles got in the way of thorough and total conquest. And then--can you believe this?--she asked me why our liberal principles had gotten in the way in Afghanistan but not at home. What do you mean?, I asked. And she told me that liberal principles had not seemed to have gotten in the way of stopping Occupy Wall Street."
"Oh my. What did you do?"
"I told her to go to her room."
- Mike Bloomberg, Christine Quinn

"Once everything seemed possible. Look at me now." - Rick Parry, #S17

Johnny Maggots Endorses If You Can Read This, You're Lying

Get the whole story here.

Occupy Noir

“The idea that this could ever work is just another expression of American exceptionalism.”
“That what could ever work?”
“A non-violent protest movement willed into existence by a fragment of the middle class.”
“Occupy is about more than the middle class.”
“You don’t have to tell me that, but it’s the middle class that dominates it.”
“What would work, in your opinion?”
“Violence.”
“Do you really think that?”
He took a drag from his cigarette.
“What about the Weathermen?”
“They didn’t kill people.”
“The Panthers?”
“They only killed each other.”
“The Symbionese Liberation Army.”
“Now, that’s more like it.” A smile crept across his face like a crack in a mirror. He laughed. “No, it’s too late for violence now. Two years ago, maybe. Just imagine if people had started picking off executives in the year of the golden parachutes. That might have been something.”
“It’s against the Geneva Convention, you know.”
“What is?”
“Shooting paratroopers before they land.”
“How romantic.”
An obese man in a Guy Fawkes mask lumbered toward us and held out a supersized McDonalds cup. Combat boots, ankle-length trench coat, and overstuffed back pack. He looked like a trash heap, and smelled like one, too. Around his neck he wore a cardboard sign big enough for a girl to have carried in a march: YES, I AM A MEMBER OF ANONYMOUS, YES, ANONYMOUS IS REAL, AND, YES, I AM TAKING DONATIONS. He didn’t say a word. Just stared at us for a second from somewhere behind the mask, then shuffled off.
“I'll tell you this. When the cops finally decide to bust this place up, if no one dies, all of this will have been for nothing.”
- excerpt from The Devils of Trinity Church by Rep. Peter T. King

Democracy Now

"Democracy is about holding governments accountable for their citizens." - an embassy rioter

"Democracy is about holding citizens accountable for their governments." - a terrorist 

"Look, it's not a state-sponsored film, and, even if it were, the United States is not a democracy, so attacking an embassy because some American citizens made an offensive movie just doesn't add up. And yet if America were a democracy and if it were a state-sponsored film, the results would be the same. So, no, I'm not concerned." - J. Christopher Stevens
 
"I remember when wogs were grateful." - John Bolton

Up For Grabs

"One day you will all be Mormons." - Mitt Romney at the Western Wall

"If the Arabs don't tear this country apart, by God we will." - Israeli settlers

"I have always loved history--I was kind of a history geek in college. One day, Israel will be regarded as a historical curiosity like the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem in the 12th Century. Boy, I wish I could be there to see that." - Peter Beinart

"Wahhhh! I'm tired!!!" - Norman Finkelstein

"You see, it's like Solomon and the baby, only they went for it." - Thomas Friedman explaining the Hamas/Fatah split to schoolchildren in Jordan

"It isn't harder to make friends than to make enemies, the outcome is just less certain." - Benjamin Netanyahu

"Don't think the Kurds are the only people I'll crush for purposes of nationalist distraction." - Recep Erdoğan to Bashar al-Assad

"You wanna get loose? I'll fucking show you loose!" - Mohammed Morsi addressing the Arab League

"There's no such thing as a civil war free from foreign intervention. Where do you think they get the guns?" - Vladimir Putin

"I feel like all the conflicts would end and the peace process would go forward if they all were wearing tuxedos." - Barbara Bush

"Secretary Clinton says that once a people wants to be free, nothing can stop them. How I wish that were true! But my experience tells me otherwise." - Hu Jintao discussing Syria with Putin in the blood sauna

"We prefer to think of it as the Middle West." - Yang Jiechi

"If these guys are 'activists' then I'm a Nobel Laureate." - Anders Breivik on the Senkaku Islands Crisis

"We're going to fuck all over these islands!" - Shintaro Ishihara, Sino-Japanese Vacation Home Wars

Neither sound nor sight
Such a sacred atmosphere
In the no-fly zone
- Gen. Stanley DarkChrystal, Western Chinese Robot Autonomous Region

"I'm so fucking hungry! I've been unemployed for three fucking years! Thank God we don't have nuclear weapons!" - the Dream Iranian

"Am I an Iranian filmmaker or am I simply a filmmaker from Iran? Am I more at home in Tehran or Paris--and what, compared to the countryside where so many of my films are set, is the difference between the two? Was Certified Copy a total piece of shit or a charming piece of shit? I hardly know myself these days. It's been a long career, and a lot of my friends are in jail. If I want to be not just the finest filmmaker of Iran, but of France and Japan also, I could probably do that. But if I just want to make something on par with a good issue of The New Yorker, well, I think I've earned that right." - Abbas Kiarostami

"Zero Dark Thirty? No, thanks. Saw that one already." - Roger Ebert

The Democratic Fucking Convention

"No, I won't go to the Convention. It looks like one of those fuck and grope clubs." - Jimmy Carter

"Yeah, we all love money, baby!" - Sen. Chuck Schumer in the Sen. George McGovern Breakdance Room

"Three months of populism!" - Michelle Obama

"Fuck! This convention isn't about democracy!" - a college Democrat

"Of course I'm disappointed with Obama's performance, who isn't? But what else could he have accomplished with such Republican obstructionism? The fact is, Obama is still cleaning up George W. Bush's messes, and he needs more time to put America back on track." - Guantanamo Bay prisoner Shaker Aamer

"Elizabeth Warren will never speak with the voice of America because the voice of America is male." - the ghost of Joe Kennedy

"You think I could be President?"
"Fuck no."
- Chelsea Clinton and Jill Biden

"Hey, guys, I've got a quote for you, '"Put all the men in camps!" - Sandra Fluke.' What do you think?" - Prince Khalid bin Talal bin Abdul Aziz al Saud

"They're outside the house!" - Dinesh D'Souza fleeing with his collection of commemorative House of Windsor spoons

"Youth, diversity, enthusiasm, whatever, our convention had thirteen screens that would project the speaker's thoughts and desires." - Reince Preibus

"More ice."
"Karl, you have plenty of--"
"I said more fucking ice!... But, Jesus Christ, Clinton is tearing it up though..."
- Karl Marx with a pounding headache

"Show Clinton, show a veteran, some minorities, that hot mom... no, too long!" - NBC producer

"Because Christopher Hitchens is dead, I feel obligated to point out that Bill Clinton is probably a rapist." - Martin Amis

"And we all wanna fuck Michelle!" - New York City Park Supervisor for Life Bill Clinton

Say No to Everything

"Life is a bunch of bullshit." - Roger Ailes

"In less than twenty-four hours I have to go back to hell... but as long as I stay awake, I am free... The only thing worth doing is nothing... Bodies are cages that trap matter and turn it into life... The matter that I am is trapped by my body... trapped in my body as life... but it wants to be free... to go back to being just matter... I once knew this young feller who got a cold and didn't do nothing about it... Within a few days he developed pneumonia... lungs filled up with fluid... and he was dead... Just like that... Reassuring, ain't it?" - George W. Bush contemplating the end of the weekend

"Life is not worthy of me." - Tony Scott

"You don't have to experience every way of life, live in every country, speak every language to understand the principle of the infinite mutability and diversity of human existence. And the moment you understand this principle is the moment that life no longer has any value." - Herodotus

"I'll be dead one day, sure. 'In the long run we're all dead.' That doesn't comfort me. What comforts me is that one day we'll be extinct." - Hunter S. Thompson

"Inexistence is bliss." - Phil Hartman