"Facebook To Buy World Tulip Industry"

"I'm married now, it's in the hands of the shareholders." - a tranquil Zuck

"Like my dick book! I'm Spider-Man!" - Eduaro Saverin legless and blind on the streets of Singapore

"I don't need to know him personally. Any rich, non-productive individual with a thirst for gold and a pathological distaste for the welfare of his fellow man will always have a friend in me." - Grover Norquist, not noticing Chuck Schumer coming from behind

"Traitor? Coward? Listen, it's standard operating procedure, Mark Zuckerberg makes you rich and you flee the country." - Jamie Dimon in North Korea

"No, no, I'm here for the money." - Bono, NASDAQ

"Yeah, we should probably review that or something, maybe settle. Honestly, I'm not even sure if we have a Facebook page." - Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Mary Schapiro

"There's no revenue, Timmy, it's only a matter of time." - Sheryl Sandberg to the assembled children of Palo Alto

"Muahaha, the emperor has has no clothes! Impropriety! Inflated value! Fuck uppery! It's like the late 90's again all in one company! Gamble if you want to win!" - Larry Kramer in a long car to a prostitute of indefinite value

Montreal, je t'aime

Q: What looks like a panda but speaks French like a penguin?
A: Montreal Anarchopanda!

"Did you even write down your Constitution, or did you just drizzle it on some pancakes?" - outraged butter aficionado Antonin Scalia on Loi 78

"Yes, the fines for violation of Loi 78 seem exorbitant, but you have to remember, it's Canadian dollars." - Premier of Quebec John James Charest

"Thank God for the Red Square. Our movement has finally found its symbol! The lead paint in this Chinese Guy Fawkes mask was giving me brain fever." - Naomi Klein

"Ne me touchez pas, flic! Ce n'est pas un masque, c'est mon visage!" - Celine Dion

"Telling are times in which New Amsterdam looks yearningly to Ville-Marie. While the Canucks gather their warm, alert bodies in numbers so daunting and sustained that their rulers write their trembling into law, the frigid knickerbockers amble groggily through their haze of digitally lubricated, onanistic indifference." - NYC Press Secretary Stu Loeser

"Now this is Sparta!" - Gerard Butler

"Don't you talk to me about 'you're a family man, you want protest to be safe.' Police are the ones who bring violence into what would otherwise be a matter of traffic delays."
"But what about the Black Blocs?"
"So some windows get smashed. Then they have to buy new ones and pay people to install them. Why, its creates a multiplier effect! Boosts the local economy! Transfers wealth from corporations to small businesses!"
"But what about the man who has to clean it all up?"
"Guess what: he'd still be a janitor either way. The problem isn't property damage. The problem is property."
"You're an old snake, you know that!"
"Hiss!"
- Christopher Plummer and Marc Parent, Chef du la service de police de la Ville de Montréal

Haikus After Mitt Romney

One's losses, my gains
Wealth: a mandate from Heaven
Bain: Cain rebranded

Gild our loose borders
Stockpile all precious metals
The poor are heathens

Securitized sins
Speculative salvation
We're doing God's work

The first shall be first
Rich men own the needle's eye
Christ as consultant

Attack of the Poor

The staunchest opponents of Lucasfilm’s expansion are now being accused of driving away the filmmaker and opening the door to a low-income housing development. That has created an atmosphere that one opponent, who asked not to be identified, saying she feared for her safety, described as “sheer terror” and likened to “Syria."

"You like Star Wars? I like fucking computers and money, let's fuck." - George Lucas

"It'll be like The Wire but in Cloud City!" - Billy Dee Williams

"Jesus, he wasn't fucking around, he loves black people!" - a contrite Terrence Howard

"God, this whole area is fucking evil, a bunch of soft ass liberals who work for Google and propagate the most advanced form of rapacious capitalism, information and desire itself as advertising revenue, pumping and fucking and screaming and sweating till the goddam heat kills us all!" - Jerry Brown to Gavin Newsom, Big Sauna

"Unlike those filthy occupiers, I don't need tear gas to cry." - Jean Quan

"Use it or lose it." - Francis Fukuyama's commencement address to UC Berkely, carved into a bullet

"San Francisco is just the Miami of homosexuality." - Michael Bloomberg

"Asian women just know how to like." - Mark Zuckerberg

"He's just a goddamn millennial Rupert Murdoch." - Wendi Deng on Zuck

"Poke me in hell you stuttering cunt." - Steve Jobs' last text to Zuck

GHate

"Let's get inaustere!" - François Hollande

"The French make love out of passion, the Germans out of duty, Americans out of self-love or self-pity, and the British simply despite themselves." - Slavoj Zizek, G8 guest lecture, Camp David

"This generation has a clear choice: you can either be Max von Sydow in The Seventh Seal or Rihanna in Battleship." - George W. Bush, Rice University commencement address

"Watching this magnificent 75th anniversary restoration of Grand Illusion, I cannot help but be overcome with shame." - Janet Napolitano, Village Voice

"The pen is not mightier than the sword, no. But without the pen, the sword has no reason to swing." - John Yoo

"To be like the shark that unknowingly consumes itself and its pack in the feeding frenzy around the whale." - Matt Rhoades, asked the Romney campaign's strategy

"Was it prostate cancer, doctor?"
"No, nurse, Mark Zuckerberg's marriage killed the Lockerbie Bomber."

"What have I done?! I shorted Zuck's marriage when I should have shorted his stock!" - Jamie Dimon losing his bearings

"Death! Do not spare me! I am ready to dine at your table! I am ready to lick your plates! I am ready for seconds!" - Eduardo Saverin before his caning in Singapore for 'general obsequiousness'

Empire State

"All is benightment, and we alone see with True Vision. The gnostics were right: this world was not made by a benevolent God, but by an evil Daemon." - Wizard Paul J. Browne, e-mail to the New York Times Style Section

"People tell me I'm evil, but I look in the mirror and I just don't see it. In fact, I don't see anything." - Michael Bloomberg

Improbable cause
Unreas'nable suspicion
It is what it is
- Ray Kelly

"Anyone who receives correspondence from Ray Kelly and does not laugh at it or simply burn it does not deserve your respect." - Christine Quinn

"That prostitution is illegal in this, the greatest commercial city in the most consumerist nation on earth, is literally insane." - Eliot Spitzer

"Everything is permitted." - Ray Kelly

"I really can't choose between either of the major candidates. All of us have done so many great things together. We made the City safe for business, fought tough campaigns against nicotine and over-eating, and defeated the Bonus Army at Zuccotti Park. That's why I've decided, ladies and gentleman, to endorse myself for a fourth term as Mayor." - Michael Bloomberg to a suddenly quiet room

"Obviously, Godzilla." - Robert Moses, asked his favorite film

What We're Capable Of

"I'm starting to realize that the most honest way to make money is just to go corporate." - Occupy Wall Street

"Our system of justice imposes a burden of proof that cannot always be met. Therefore, Evil is ineradicable: there are always those who will get away. To compensate for those crimes that go unpunished, unproven, a corresponding number of innocents must be sacrificed. Too many and the People lose incentive to follow the rules. Too few and the Evil that lurks in the heart of men grows bold. Deviousness, disobedience, slackness, and backsliding run rampant. It is a matter of finding the right proportion. For the maintenance of order and the perpetuation of excellence, the miscarriage of justice is just as important as its merciless and thorough administration. " - Paul Browne

"The police force is the best place for a liberal society to keep its fascists. It contains and neutralizes them, even makes them useful, puts them to work enforcing the rule of law rather than undermining it, holds them at arms length from the true halls of power while appropriating their love of violence for more enlightened ends. The police is to the far right as academia is to the far left." - Michael Bloomberg

"Strange creatures of wonder making love in secret bases we'll never know of, but their love is without sex, a decadent search for lost youth in a sphere rapidly filling with carbon. It's enough to make a man cast his lot with the drones!" - Roger Ebert, review of The Avengers

"We are all just pieces of meat, but we misrecognize each other as human beings. Agency, interiority, self: these are illusions. If you prick us, do we not bleed? No. Blood simply runs, and the blade sets it free. But the illusion is real! Its effect upon the brain becomes determinant. I think I am, therefore I am: that's how Entities are born. Therefore, when I put on this mask, perform this dance, and sing the ancient songs, I really do become a god." - Mitt Romney, Staples management seminar

"Mr. President, if I ruled the world--"
"--your politics would be different? HAW HAW HAW!"
- Jay Carney, Barack Obama

We All Gonna Get Gay Married!

"Life is a bad joke, and this day North Carolina is the punch line." - Andrew Sullivan

"On the contrary, Gov. Romney and I have the exact same position on gay marriage: we're both for whatever's most politically expedient." - Barack Obama

"Oh fuck! I forgot that's where the Convention will be, it's going to be like '68 all over again, I hope you can swing a pipe." - an ashen David Plouffe to a shocked Robert Gibbs

"Congressman Ryan, have you ever even kissed a man?"
"Well, I... I..."

"Have you never felt a man wrap his strong hairy arms about you, press you to his warm, bare chest, and whisper in yours, 'I love you?'"

"My God!"

"Have you never even watched videos of ladies making it with each other? I mean tasteful, sex-positive videos with good lighting?"

"My God, no!"

"You see what I mean, how can you take a guy like this seriously?"

- Joe Biden, Paul Ryan, Vice-Presidential Candidate Debate

"Gay marriage is the gateway drug to equal pay." - Patricia Heaton

"There are but two classes, the gay and the straight, and the latter shall be equal in their mastery over the earth!" - Billy Graham, first shit in three years

"I think the upcoming film Prometheus is a good representation of what gay marriage will bring about." - Willard Romney, Durham Sci-Fi Convention

"Free and legal, baby. People should be free to grow it, corporations should be free to sell it, the government should be free to tax it. Why are we ruining lives and squandering millions? It feels fucking great and people fucking love it." - Joe Biden, Man For All Seasons, on marijuana

Socialism* and the Harmonious Order

"What's the difference between me and my opponent? Every morning I wake up and I think to myself, 'Am I a piece of shit?' And then I get over it. But I have to decency to ask myself that question." - Francoise Hollande

"I feel about as happy as a Republican would feel if Mitt Romney were elected." - a French socialist

"Jesus. Get me a beer, no, the liter size." - Angela Merkel on learning of the Fall

"If only I could fly away from here! If only I were free, free as a drone!" - Chen Guangcheng

"Yeah they say Bo was all 'Maoist,' and I assumed it was sort of a joke. But when his wife, Gu Kailai, came into the Police Group meeting wearing a PLA General's uniform, saluted, and told us she was 'on a mission,' well that was some Hundred Flowers shit indeed."  - Jiao Li

"I don't understand. When you need to get rid of some fat, hapless, alcoholic foreigner, you don't have your wife murder him. You pay him off and then ruin his life through any number of the normal, paralegal channels. I mean, why do we not have rule of law if not for things like this?" - Hu Jintao

"Yes, I realize that comparing Chongqing to the Cultural Revolution is not only obviously dishonest but also seriously jeopardizes the future of reform in this country. But you forget that although I look like a sweet old man, I'm a total fucking snake." - Grandpa Wen

"I banish you!" - Bo Xilai

"I'll never stop fucking!" - Nicolas Sarkozy, shrugging at the Nation 

"I don't know, it's going to be a transition with Nicolas. . . you know the Edge called me the other day." - Carla Bruni on the phone to Pippa Middleton

More Praise for the New Inquiry!

Desperate to be loved, we've prostituted ourselves to The New Inquiry again. But they couldn't accept us for who we really are, so we have to dump all our problems on you.

Enjoy the B-sides!

***

“I'm finally an adult! Condemned to die!” – Christina Aguilera

"Ah, but what is the beauty of Man next to that of a fine thoroughbred?" - Teddy Roosevelt

“Truth? Beauty? I’m not really concerned, my wife, Ann, reports to me on that.” – Willard “Mitts off” Romney

“I was terrified of nuns before before I read this, and now I understand they’re naked under those things!” – Cardinal Timothy Dolan

“It’s true, these days the best way to scope out a date is via satellite.” – Leon Pannetta

“Why be with a man or a woman when you could be with a Post-It?” – OK Cupid

“I can change my style, my boots, or my guitar, but I’ll never be nappy!” – David Bowie

"Nature is so generous. No matter how ugly you are, if you are young, there is something beautiful about you. But the hand that gives also takes." - Ashley Judd

“I’m handsome as the devil!” – Nicholas Sarkozy

“Am I not the New Diana, the New Helen of Troy?!” – Duchess Kate Middleton to a cowering Tina Brown

“I too was a role model.” – Katherine Heigel to Charles Barkley

“Well, my friend Catherine Breillat says that the fragility of female flesh inspires either disgust or brutality, but for me, hell, it just makes me wanna have a good time!” - Rick Perry

“Girls can’t write.” – Larry Summers

“I never met a woman I couldn’t buy.” – Sky Briggs

“Yes, Ms. Rosenfelt is very attractive.” - Jonathan Franzen on whether he has read The New Inquiry

“I am the face of the 21st Century.” – Wendi Deng Murdoch

“I am exiled from the Kingdom of Bodies.” - Stephen Hawking

“Women are there to be enjoyed.” - Laura Bush, Game of Thrones

“I dreamt of a giant woman whose thighs held up the sky.” - Stephen Chu dropping acid in a sensory deprivation tank

“For fuck’s sake, what’s funny about beauty? Beauty is terrible and subjective like mental disease or a fever of the brain.” - Surgeon General Regina M. Benjamin

“There's nothing worse than the young enjoying themselves near bodies of water.” - Her Majesty

"You've heard the expression 'God's gift to women?' Well, this is the pint of ice cream God buys Himself because He's sad." - The Last Blogger on Earth

“In recognition of the essential ugliness of life, and of American literature in particular, this year’s Pulitzer Prize goes to no one.” - Sig Gissler

Ginch, All Too Ginch

"He was the last living meme." - John 'Marat' Boehner

"Three rows of police in riot gear, two rows of metal barriers, and one row of armored horses are all that stands between the mob and its freedom. Our society desperately, desperately wants to tear itself apart. Loins burning, eyes afire with mad craving, drool washing over our glittering fangs, we are ravenous for self-destruction. To see such a dimwitted band of tacky, complacent, paternalistic ignoramuses turn their backs on the hellfire of the future and line up to prevent the violent consummation of our collective will to die is the worst disappointment I have known as a citizen, as a historian, and as an artist." - the Ginch, May Day

"Newt's never been the same since Burning Man. For one thing, now he's immortal." - Reince Priebus

"Loathsome! A beast! A troll! Biden once compared him to a lizard but that can't be right, he's a creature of pure gin and the last of Margaret Thatcher's seed on Earth." - Hillary Clinton going off-script at the White House Correspondent's Dinner 

"He told me that if he wins I could still keep the See as long as I delivered to him his wife's height in stained glass, frankincense, and myrrh." - Pope Ratzinger the Raccoon

"If asked I will praise him, but do not force me to bear the sight of him, for that I cannot do." - Willard 'White Gloves' Romney 

"Love is like the creation of the universe or fire-bombing a city with no strategic value, that is, violence without pity and the creative will its only end." - Calista Gingrich

"Somewhere  in the great Mojave there stalks like a polar bear a great white Form on four legs. His cetaceous heft sways from side to side as he lopes across the infinite flat searching for a salt lick. On a full moon, astronauts can spot his alabaster mass from orbit. Whereupon he finds a lick, he sets to work, all a'slobber, lowering his great pink tongue like a rope ladder and evacuating Nature of its flavor and of its nutriment. On and on he sucks, far beyond satiety, as though compelled by some duty to replace the world's body with his own. For a time, gustatory ecstasy replaces the sadness that throbs in him always. But the lick runs out, and alkaline sadness returns. On he roves. He's still out there, his huge, lumbering, cosmic body glistening in the unfriendly night. Ah, Newt! Ah, humanity!" -The Lost Wife

"When people ask me what I see as the future of the American people, well I just look in the mirror." - Ginch Celestial