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