Hounds of Hell

"Once I was clinically dead on the operating table and I had one of them out-of-body experiences, started headin' toward the light down some great big spirit tunnel, and I said, What the hell is this?! I don't wait in lines! I'm goddam rich! If my Maker wants to meet me, he can take a damn number! Then I finally got to the end and where was I? Purgatory. Purgatory! You don't think I earned it? I hollered. You send me to Hell right God damn now or I'll frack this fucking waiting room into oblivion." - T. Boone Pickens

"Seal me inside!" - Silvio Berlusconi

"I die for the Race!" - George Zimmerman, bleeding out on the steps of the Tampa Bay Times Forum, August 30, 2012

"All that has been done to improve the quality of life is undermined by the extension of its duration." - Joe Paterno

"Either total anarchy or brutal dictatorship: please, just give me one or the other!" - Eric Cantor, walking out of Congress

"You appear in a different form, but still I hunt you!" - Chris Christie chasing Jon Corzine dressed as Donald Duck, Disney World

"Management is the illusion of management."
"Yes, but the same could/must be said of happiness."
- Jamie Dimon, Lloyd Blankfein

"If you hate America so much, why don't you become a terrorist?"
"Because there's nothing worth fighting for."
- a College Republican accosting Glenn Greenwald while on vacation in Rio

"There's evil in the world and it's ineradicable. We resist it, of course, but our victories are temporary. Fact is, there is more evil than good, and if Time had a finish line, evil would win, but Times doesn't, so we fight on, forever, a losing battle." -Takashi Miike

"Any man who can't regard his former self as an external enemy to be fought and overcome doesn't have what it takes to work for me." - Mitt Romney

Inevitably, the question comes.
"Well, what do you want to do?"
I know that the obvious answer will not satisfy him, but I say it anyway.
"Nothing."
"What do you mean nothing?"
"I don't want to do anything."
This is unacceptable to him.
"Anything?"
"I don't want to do anything."
"What do you mean?"
"I don't know. I don't want to do anything. I want to fucking die. What do you want me to say?'
"OK. Tell me this. Just imagine. Imagine your ideal life. Just hypothetically. In your ideal life, what are you doing?"
"I... I don't know."
"Come on. It's OK. Just as an exercise."
"I don't know. I don't know what I want to do."
"Just imagine your ideal life. Just your day to day life. What do you want it to be like?"
This black mail is infuriating. He won't be satisfied until I give him what he wants to hear--nothing other than his own vicarious expectations for me, which are lowering by the second.
"I don't know."
"What do you mean, you don't know?"
"I don't know. Do I have to?"
"Everyone does."
"I don't think that's true."
"Of course it is."
"No, it isn't. Jesus Christ. What do I want my ideal life to be like? I want to be comfortable and not suffer all the fucking time. What the fuck does anyone want?"
"I mean for work."
"I don't want to fucking work. I want to be free."
"Well, we all want that."
"Do we? You seem to care a lot about getting ahead."
"I do."
"Okay, then, I guess we want different things."
"This isn't about what I want, it's about what you want."
"I want to be left alone."
"Okay. Now we're getting some where."
I should have smashed my pint glass in his fucking face.
- from the diary of Barack Obama, entry recounting a career development seminar with Larry Tribe, November 9, 1989