Primary By Ordeal

I. FIRST BLOOD

"There are no principles, there's only the way we want the world to be." - Trump

"You ever fucked a loaf of cornbread?" - Scott Walker to Bobby Jindall before the Carousel Debate

"Bring back the ivory trade!" - Mike Huckabee, Des Moines Zoo

"I joined the Party because I was a revolutionary, not because of any ideological nonsense." - Trump

"I am the hateful Thing." - Marco Rubio, naked in the mirror

"Death meat wagons!" - Jeb in the midst of starch withdrawal gestures wildly at Suburbans and Yukons filled with Florida Christians

"The latex body movement is underrated and had a profound influence on my confidence." - Lindsey Graham

"Do it, son!"
"No, father, no!"
"DO IT!"
- Jeb Bush bests his father in the fighting pit

"I will bathe in the blood of my foes as Lady Justice, with a sword of diamond." - Carly Fiorina cows trump in the Chevy Debate

"The meritocracy is more competitive than ever before." - David Brooks, real or fake?

"Hey, doll, pour me some of that jazzy Cuban coffee and let's make eyes." - Al Gore, having a stroke while tailing Rubio undercover in South Beach

"The Authority will handle this!"
"Why don't you handle it?"
"I don't even know how to begin to want to handle my own problems."
- the Voter

"No one can look upon the slaughterhouse and fail to recognize himself in it." - Obama

"That's me, I'm John Hurt!" - Jerry Brown watching Snowpiercer

"...and crocodiles are extraterrestrials." - Rand Paul

"If you put a glory hole in there, the right kind of person will show up." - Al Gore 2016

"Four million more years!" - symbiotes cheer Xtyhl Sanders for High Administrator-Priest of the Joint Lizard-Mecarthropod Co-Propserity Sphere

"Touch not the eggs!" - Arachnid Clinton

"Wall it up!"
"No gentlemen, everything can be a wall, even air!"
- the Republican Study Committee breaks up into the Freedom Caucus and the True Sight to the Eyeless Caucus

II. JURY INSTRUCTIONS IN THE TRIAL OF MANKIND

"My husband is a saxophone in the trio of the Kim trilogy of unicorns."

- Ri Sol-ju

"You of all people should have known: Love is not a meritocracy."
- Melania Trump casts Donald out of the airship

"People forget about me. They forget I played a pedophile clown in a 70's B-drama." - George Pataki

"How do I get in, Jeb?"
"To what, young lady?"
"The Deep State."
- Kittenkaboodle, Iowa, Jeb! Campaign stop where candidate increasingly appears unnerved

"The Will of the Law? No Mercy! The Will of the Law? No Mercy!" - Yale Law School Class of 2018 driven into a bloody frenzy by a visiting magistrate

"TPP is necessary, because we don't know what kind of democratic changes might undermine our neo-liberal economic order in the future." - Hillary Clinton, the Hampstead Kennel Debate double reversal

"Ouzu is clear!"
"No! It is cloudy in its true form!"
- Syriza splits

"You like Legos, huh? I bet I can fuck your shit up on any set." - Mitt strokes a space shuttle as he tries to convince the last Super-delegate, 13-year-old Peachy Grandwillow, not to vote for Trump

"It was chilling, of course, but sometimes I dream of the pagoda, and the pool in the garden." - Clinton on North Korea, dictation hour 3,216, My Life: The Rest of My Life

"I play to people's fantasies... I call it truthful hyperbole. It's an innocent form of exaggeration--and a very effective form of promotion." - Donald Trump in his memoir, The Art of the Deal

"I will be president and we will have Cuba, I made a promise to the Bacardis and a blood oath to La Causa!" - Marco Rubio, only candidate to appear at Univision GOP Debate

"Nonsense. I love rum." - statement released by the Jeb! Campaign, candidate not seen in public in 4 months at this point

"I like Barethon, I like his wife, I like that Red Witch, she's great--he's great and you know--I think a lot of people are going to support us." - Trump

"Yeah folks, I hate the Clintons. Because I could not escape them in life, I shall thwart them in death!" - Obama's lame duck anti-philosophy

"I love to laugh with Bill, but I know Huma won't bat an eye at any request I make." - Hillary

"Well look everybody--my brother is going to be a little different now. He's going to have gained a little weight and may lack hair to most appearances. You'll get him, folks, but he just doesn't speak straight English anymore." - George W., newly appointed head of Jeb! Campaign at the Emergency Press Conference

"Every 62 million years the solar system drifts to the northern frontier of the galactic plane, exposing it to higher levels of intergalactic cosmic radiation and precipitating mass extinctions, but I will always have a six-figure salary." - Anthony Weiner

"Men used to do the right thing and maintain multiple families secretly." - Phyllis Schafly

"No consequences for the right people, ever." - Tom Brady wearing that dumb hat he wears when he lies in public

"OUT DEMON!" - Al Gore violently beats his chest in a ceremony curing self-inflicted hiccup attack victims Eric Cantor and John Boehner

"Maybe some of the knowledge workers can't be saved, and maybe they shouldn't be." - Piketty

"Never forget, never cease to honor those who died in battle, for in doing so we forget the causes and results of conflict. It is thus that our Empire suspends Time and luxuriates forever in the sublimity of War." - Obama, end of Episode VII at Arlington

"A liberal is one who is only accidentally but always racist." - Matt Damon, Miracleman

         An Interlude by Night with Charlie Rose:

"There's only one ride I'll never turn down, the Caramel Carousel--make it, baby?" - Charlie Rose goes for last call bliss

"Save a line o' Jazz for your boy now." - Charlie at the Hep Note

"There's only one thing I take more seriously than golf, and that's Jazz." - Rose holds forth at Ruth Chris happy hour

Heheh Haw haw! "...and Jazz of course."
"Actually, Charlie, I don't really like Jazz, the one thi--"
"And that's all for tonight. Thank you, Gwyneth Paltrow, and to you all there out there, beyond, goodnight."
- 14 minutes of dead air

"You gotta do it, man."
"I know, old friend of mine, Master of Iron, but I just don't know what prescription drug I want to hawk."
- Arnold Palmer and CR

"Who did you really want to kill?"
"Aw, Charlie, folks at home don't want to know about that."
- CR and former President Obama, post-Portal

"Me? No, I don't tour outside south Florida anymore." - CR gets into a Tiger Cab in South Beach

"And what if 'Charlie Rose' is just an abstraction, a parody of something that might have been but never was, yet which will live on in all eternity?"
"Very clever haw haw."
- Jorge Ramos and CR

"Sleep is for people who can't see beyond the pale shade of society. Who can't see that all is a natural struggle between Races." - CR after starting the morning show

"Certain women you kiss, they taste of ash." - to Gayle King, pre-taping

III. TACK TO THE MIDDLE

"I watched Alien again." - Jimmy Carter to the Cabinet

"The only killer I respect is Lincoln." - El Chapo

"I can't wait until both Jeremy Corbyn and Bernie Sanders are heads of state and nothing is different."
- Tony Blair behind David Cameron in line to fuck a unicorn, Jade Pagoda, Pyongyang

"I've freaked my Dad out. I told him I don't want to breed. He seems to have taken comfort in the belief that it's an ecological matter. This is true to a great extent, but I also think that being a person is sort of a raw deal." - Lindsey Graham

"As regards Planned Parenthood, anyone who has watched this videotape--I dare Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama to watch these tapes... Watch a fully formed fetus on the table, its heart beating, its legs kicking, while someone says 'We have to keep it alive to harvest its brain.'" - Carly Fiorina

"Do it."
"No, Bernie! Please!"
"We have to do it, Candy. We've got no choice now. Unleash the Dark Memes!"
- Bernie Sanders up against the wall at the Puerto Rican primary

"I lost my fucking mind in high falutin' Democratic fragility." - Historian Sean Wilentz on Bernie Sanders and/or his latest leftist freak out

"I mean, who's really to blame here?" - Clinton, at the conclusion of an incident set in motion by a series of schemes, casual lusts, and procrastinations

"Of course we're in fucking crisis, EVERYONE is--by design! Ah, well... if only, it's much more sinister and insane than that. The fact is the model of life we all live is crisis, along with unobtainable overlapping contradictory fantasies, imposed cynicism and personalized lies. Everyone whose life is not dominated by real terror and material impoverishment is fine, everything else is a bullshit scam and a prison of some kind. You're welcome to it." - John Boehner addresses the GOP Members Only Caucus on his resignation

Show Me a Mayor

Oscar Isaac as Al Pacino as Mayor Heat in Show Me A Mayor

"The people cry out for a mini-series." - Joe Biden

"Omg! Cities!" - Prestige Crime Drama

"...and you play Lord Hawhaw Bossman...." - David Simon gets it together with Bob Balaban

"Only a white Hispanic can save us." - Oscar Isaac as Ted Cruz in the unaired pilot for Ciudad de la Futura, on the failed quest to complete the trans-pacific Tijuana monorail

"There is a white beyond white, a white we can all be, with the right charter schools: hyper-white."
- Cory Booker

"Every city a Singapore!" - your friends in 15-20 years (post-date for exposed brick)

Hot mayors, cool law,
Lobster roll just a worm covered in slaw
- Springsteen plays on car radio

"The mayor told me I could be homecoming queen."
- Max von Sydow shows up uninvited on set

"The show is compulsively watchable but tastes of bran."
- A.O. Scott deigns to turn on the TV in his apartment

"We'll have to write our way out."
- twelve show runners trapped in a mine

"Do it again, but cheaper."
- Paul Haggis directing

"Wow, man, Catherine Keener hasn't aged a day--"
"That's Winona Ryder."

"I find Ballers more compelling because the Rock is sort of asexual; like he's supposed to be sexy but he can only be charming. There's a fuck scene between him and his gal and it's not sexy at all, it's alike watching two marmots fuck." - Michael Douglas, high, interrupts an impromptu That's 70's Show reunion at the Premiere after-party

"I can do anything!"
"So what, I can do it by barely doing anything at all."
-Nic Pizzolato and David Simon

"Somebody hacked the TSA body scanners and are vaporizing the people!"
- Meanwhile at the Newark airport

“Most lives are seed scattered on fallow ground.” - Michael Bloomberg

"Whoa. Look, I'm not racist, but..." - Everyone

"A liberal can't win."
- David Simon smoking in a children's hospital

HELL AS

I. NIGHT OF JOY

“There is no right or left in Greece. We are all united in the Oxi to European dominance.” - Ioannis Metaxas

"Witness the horrible triumph of liberal democracy: a people given the chance to abolish the future, but they have to fucking vote to do it!"
- bandito Paul Krugman

"As this plebiscite is the only thing I've received from the state in five years, I'm naturally worried that they're going to take it out of my pension. Wouldn't it be better simply to default on the vote itself?"
- chorus of 40% of eligible voters

“The purpose of voting is to constitute and legitimate the state: voting 'no' is a contradiction in terms.” - Jürgen Habermas

"Greece exit? Such hubris. America has spent her whole life trying to leave Europe, only to succeed in turning the entire World into a shitty imitation of it." - Janet Reno

“If we deconstruct the binary of 'oxi' and 'nai' in the text that is the demos of Hellas (placed under erasure) it becomes clear that the notion (der Begriff) of choice (from the Germanic and Old French 'chois') phallocentrically (not to mention eurocentrically!) (re)presses and maintains its putative neoliberal contrary: non-choice.”
- Avital Ronell, op-Ed Le Monde

"Save me from my Teutonic banality, ye profligate children of the Reich!" - Gerhard Richter, shouting to anyone who will listen outside his summer home in a bunker above Thessaloniki

“Greece gave birth to Western civilization, and Greece has the right to destroy it." - Nia Vardalos

“Say it with Euros, boys!” - Laskarina Bouboulina

"Angela will lose that smirk when we join the Drachma." - Silvio Berlusconi's 15th inaugural address

“Forget the drachma! What will happen when I'm forced to convert my tax exemptions into Swiss Francs?” - Greek media mogul George Bobolas

“We stand in solidarity with our Greek brothers in their stand against European infidels.” - various ISIS Twitter accounts

Gypsy children at the station want a coin, want a savor,
Oh, momma, don't that ouzo sting so sweet,
Ridin' commando on an Athens-bound bus,
‘Oxi,’ she said, ‘Oxi...’
- Kris Kristofferson, Live at the Parthenon, Athens 2015

II. THE MORNING AFTER

"To change nothing, forever" - scrawl in ballpoint pen covering the walls of the Finance Minister’s private bathroom stall, discovered by Euclid Tsakalotos on his first day in office

"We will negotiate with you!"
"No, fuck you, pay me."
"Uh..."
- Plan B

“What, if some day or night a demon were to steal after you into your loneliest loneliness and say to you: 'This life as you now live it and have lived it, you will have to live once more and innumerable times more' ... Would you not throw yourself down and gnash your teeth and curse the demon who spoke thus? Or have you once experienced a tremendous moment when you would have answered him: 'You are a god and never have I heard anything more divine.'” - Wolfgang Schäuble explains the business cycle to Yanis Varoufakis, prompting his resignation

“What the fuck happened?”
“What happened is, we’ve been trolled. Consummately trolled. Trolled like fucking Congressmen on Twitter. Trolled by an avant-garde performance of the vacuity of Leftist hopes.”
- Omar Sharif talks down the panicked Jacobin editorial board while cooly drawing on his last cigarette

“There is no coup. Everything is working as intended: democracy to banish all forms of domination except the economic, the EU to advance democracy, and social democrats to secure capitulation under the guise of resistance.” - European Council President Donald Tusk

“Fiscal responsibility is the most successful meme of our time.”
- Jānis Reirs, Finance Minister of the ‘Nation’ of Latvia

“Endless penance!” - Pope Emeritus Joseph Ratzinger

"Let my semen be their tzatziki." - Dominique Strauss-Khan

"Bring another bottle, something actually fucking dry!"
“Herr Schäuble, that's the fifth bottle you've sent back!"

"I try to stay away from politics wherever possible." - Angela Merkel

"You can't just consign an entire nation to austerity and isolation!"
"What about your Newark, New Jersey?"
- Vox panel stumped by Christine Lagarde

“Human goodness does not scale up!” - David Graeber, late night confession to Pablo Iglesias on the Red Telephone

"False consciousness is the new Lutheranism." - Antonio Negri, helping Zizek rake leaves on his estate on the Austro-Slovenian border

“I think I am becoming a god.” - Mario Draghi jumps into the mouth of Mount Etna

"I am the Fifth Horseman of the Apocalypse." - David Cameron, seated on a Harley next to the Reagan statue in Grosvenor Square

“I don't understand why the Latvians are being such vindictive little bitches. They got to keep their language didn't they?” - Michael D. Higgins, President of Ireland

"Ich bin ein Berliner." - the ghost of Aristotle Onassis

“Liberation theology, like debt forgiveness, must be dispensed with moderation.” - Pope Francis

"There's only one cartel, cabron. It was here before me, and it will be here after me, and it will exist as long as la frontera." - El Chapo

“Alright, Monsieur Piketty, I will see your debt jubilee and raise you one Air Force base.”
“Too rich for my blood, Senator Marshall.” (Folds)

“My progeny has achieved my ultimate goal. I sacked Rome, but they have sacked all of Europe.” - Alaric, King of the Germanic barbarians, on the right hand side of God

“We shall salt your economy so that no business shall ever grow there again.” - Jean-Claude Juncker

"I can see Germany from my house." - Putin, peering through the eye of a 150-foot tall statue of Sisyphus in Kaliningrad accessible only by private escalator

“It’s crazy, isn’t it, what’s going on in Greece right now, how, uh, how hard they’re working over there, and here we are, champagne every night, watching the sunset over Lake Geneva…”

Kerry couldn’t find the words. All he could think about was Zarif, sitting there close beside him. He glanced at Zarif nervously. Zarif’s dark eyes were fixed on him, gentle yet… hungry. Kerry looked back at the lake. His heart was pounding.

Without a word, Zarif slid his hand into Kerry’s and squeezed it tightly. Kerry swallowed. His face went flush. Zarif’s hand was so warm, so soft, so firm.

“I wish these negotiations would never end,” said Kerry.

“Me too.”

SEE HOW FAR WE’VE COME! IN THE 20TH CENTURY, THE NEW MAN STOOD FIRST OF ALL FOR ESCAPE FROM FAMILY, PROPERTY, AND STATE DESPOTISM. TODAY, THIS IS THE NEW MOTTO: MONEY, FAMILY, ELECTIONS. EVEN IF THE MONEY IS THAT OF THE NET-ECONOMY, THE FAMILY THAT OF TWO HOMOSEXUALS, THE ELECTIONS A GREAT DEMOCRATIC FEAST, I CAN’T REALLY SEE THE POLITICAL PROGRESS.

I. PROGRESS IS THE KILLING WORD

"Things will change only gradually, and in such a manner that they fundamentally remain the same." - America

"The most important thing about all this Progress is that it was initiated top down." - Clinton Campaign

“All you need is your fucking Brooklyn apartment and your rainbow filter on your facial identification software-analysed photo and your fucking… Fuck these people." - Abu Bakr al Baghdadi

"You done good, queer. You done good." - slow zoom-in on Bill Paxton's tearing up face in Roland Emmerich’s Independence Gay

"Fathers, tell me about the brown woman from whose rented body you harvested me?"
"We don't know anything about her."
- Progress

"Everything I know about the interpreting the Law I learned from Paul Schraeder's Hardcore." - Antonin Scalia

"Let's do it, baby: polygamy, polyandry, group marriage, bestial union, all of it! All those loves which can be named are legal ." - Chief Cyborg Gelatin Justice Kennedy, The Maw v. The Sink Hole

"The creation of documents is the highest calling of the Law." - the Honorable Ole Judge Hawhaw Bossman to every shithead do-gooder 20-something

"It's precisely because there is no God that we must abase ourselves before Earthly might." - someone who makes memes about Ruth Bader Ginsburg

"I'm so damn cold! Gotta. Get. Naked." - paradoxical undressing victim Justice Samuel Alito

"I can't do this. I can't do this!" - Rick Santorum shambles out of bed hyperventilating after a failed attempt to make love to his wife

“I just drink three bottles of expensive champagne every night and dream of a city of endless fire.” - Jeb Bush on dealing with a low carb diet

“To me the basic fitness is run three miles and leap off a rolling flatbed truck to tackle a slave of Power.” - a better dimension where Che Guevara and Burt Reynolds are essentially the same person

"B-b-but how could I be the problem?!" - Vote For Hillary

"Why eat the cream? Because it's there." - Chris Christie on spontaneity in endless fundraising

"I made those eyes see, they're mine to blind." - Rand Paul crushes the glasses of an 8-year-old patient when she tries to pay with Obamacare

“The Democratic primary reminds me of poutine… mmmmm.”
“What the fuck is wrong with you?”
- Al Gore and Bono bike riding

"Raise the dead!" - Jindall '16

"Ancient astronauts created Mexican culture." - Rand Paul

“All the old psychological defenses are new again with pervasive instant media and white infantilization!” - Donald Trump address to the APA

"It's not about rejecting the hicks, it's about being inclusive to all the different types of Americans who shop like hicks." - Wal-Mart takes a stand on the Confederate Flag

"Whites, as the unmarked race, are always the most in need of identity." - Lindsey Graham

"Internet hate forums, oblivious consumerist conformist family, horror of piedmont track suburb living, vague ideology of Southernism.” - FBI napkin profile

"The only way out of what one feels to be a damaging subculture is to burrow deeper and deeper within until the only option is break or buy. At that moment you'll make everything fit, goddam the consequences." - Nikki Haley

“White lives matter? Believe me, they do not.” - Stalin

"If Sherman hadn't burned my great grand paw paw's plantation, we might be one of the great pork families of Georgia." - Saxby Chambliss's mistress Chablis gets misty-eyed in Savannah

"Hicks like synthetic opiates because they are drugs you can Consume." - Dr. Chuck Pillwriter

“Ecological sin!” - Red Nuns and Black Cardinals, cleaning the Earth in the service of Santa Muerte

“The trick is to move to New England, not to stay there.” - Bernie Sanders

“They say every child born in VT has traces of his Seed in their DNA.” - Arianna Huffington on the Sandman

"A better world is possible--for the strong." - bandito Paul Krugman

“The people are making demands and doubting the efficacy of the old gods” - Conservative Citizen Council, opening agenda of every meeting

"President Nixon shall have his share of the Eternal." - Patrick Buchanan

“You know, my father gloated the day Nixon died, he truly hated him.”
“All the fathers did, but they carried a little Nixon in their heart.”
- George Clooney, Amal Ramzi

"You're a terrible father."
"Really? I always thought I was like Brad Pitt in Tree of Life."
- Jeb and George Sr.

“Let's be real, everyone else's dad is a fucking punk compared to Uncle Joe.” - FDR to the assembled Allied Command on Father’s Day

"And then just to show me what a sonuvabitch he was, he fired me and finished the memo himself and panned his own wife's southeast asian aid policy." - at the Clinton Foundation

"Hillary is my rock," he lied, coolly.

"Hey guys... What are you doing?"
"Oh just, um, playing a game!"
"What sort of game is that?"
"Oh just a game, you know... a most dangerous game..."
- Scott Walker walks in on Mitt holding a bowie knife to the neck of a bedraggled, wild-eyed Tagg

"How many dirty thistles are trampled under foot, yet the seed thrives... New life carried aloft on the wind that is also the whisper of death... ‘neath a starlit sky, cold and bright, like wheat fields that bear no fruit... Your road shall be the Milky Way, Young Rider, e'en as the Indians have told..." - George W Bush to Qassem Suleimani, observing the Venus-Jupiter Conjunction, Prairie Chapel Ranch

"To me, it will always be 'ISIS.'" - Donald Rumsfeld

II. GENISIS

"One way or another, a person's got to get themselves into the Death Cult business." - a local psychiatrist on drug cartels, jihadist groups, and counter-terrorism forces

"Here there are dimensions within dimensions, manifolds within manifolds..." says the silver man in the crimson cape with the golden eye as he slips the ring of power upon your finger binding you to the darkness forever 

"It's fucking Jenga for you, Xenu!" - Tom Cruise burns down the Gold Base

"All things are possible in this world, by the grace of God..." sayeth the blind sheik Jimmy Carter

"The Horn of Africa is an actual horn, if you blow it the dead will rise." - the blind sheik Jimmy Carter

"Ba'al will wipe the Muselmans away like sand from marble, but like sand they shall cling and fester between toes of the foot that tread on them." - Sheik Carter communes with Gen. DarkChrystal via the Mirror Pond in the Palace Beneath the Dunes

"What did you expect to find beneath the Boulder of Bone--a bed of flowers?" - Sheik Carter to George Packer

"Decency won't save us." - Dick Cheney

"The wogs have to be run like a business." - Special Meeting of the Troika, the Norway Fund, the Saudi Fund and the remaining shareholders of Sbarro

"Belgium will be great again!" - Elon Musk partners with Belgium to open a rubber euthanasia plant in DR Congo

“The only thing that can surpass Capitalism is an infinite, synchronized Harmony of Willing…” - Mark Zuckerberg in the Palace of Jade, the hand of Xi Jinping clasped firmly on his shoulder

"The end of history means never having to learn again." - The Internet of Things

"Man is the first and only creature to comprehend its mortality, individually and as a species, and therefore any cost is justified in the effort to prevent this intelligence from extinction."
"Survival is for animals. Man's duty is not to survive, but to accept the luxurious gift of death."
- Elon Musk, Marco Rubio

"Drink the gold!" - St. California

"Thanks to relativistic time dilation, the work day in principle never has to end. However, it would be unrealistic to expect Variable Capital to maintain peak productivity for the entire Duration. Too many start-ups have gone Supernova as a result of over-reliance on Disciplinary Factors to prevent their Entropic Curve from surpassing their Curve of Organic Consistency. That's why the best approach to sustainable enterprise building is to foster an attitude of cynical compliance amongst Variable Capital. Let them think they are Non-Determined Functions and structure their workflow to account for inevitable slackness while applying only as much Terror necessary for the resultant ass-covering to maintain profit margins." - McKinsey, Arachnos, and Portal

"Acquire, and become closer to what you imagine loves you back." - Efficient Lines of Code

"What has the extension of human life expectancy beyond the age of 30 accomplished besides the prolongation of servitude? What is a majority in the present but a tyrannical minority in relation to the countless generations to come who will be freed by our crimes? Everyday you don't revolt is a day you consent to, and deserve, your subjection." - bandito Paul Krugman, the Campaign to Reinvent Love

"You will renounce."
"Never!"
- Mitt to Tagg, tied up on the rack, The Cola Wars

"A black hood, the whir of a hand cranked battery being charged, the snap of electricity: What is a prelude to truth, Alex?" - Kathryn Bigelow, Blacksite Celebrity Actual Jeopardy

"Doctor, doctor, my heart!"
"What is it, boy?"
"My heart, it’s so cold!"
"Do you feel it squeezing?"
"Yes! Oh god Doctor, what's wrong with me?"
"It's the cold hand of the Reaper, boy."
"Oh god, Doctor, give me the sweet merciful gift of death!"
"What do you think this is, boy? Belgium?"
- Ole Dr. John Boehner to Frostbite and Narwhal Attack Victim Eric “Nanouk” Cantor, Yukon Territory

“He'd stop a’sliverin' if I delivered the burnin' husk!"” - Scott Walker torches a D.C. mansion to appease new internet meme the Slivery Man

“Be sure to check the correct box on the form.” - George HW Bush slowly pulling a revolver from his hospital gown

"He's all the cars!" - Jay Carney to NORAD Command after Elon Musk achieves singularity

III. THE FINAL DISSOLUTION

"Don't be afraid of the love that chooses you." - Bill Clinton

"You're not President anymore, you can't just make things happen."
"Fuck you and fuck the guinea worm."
- Jimmy Carter goes for bliss

“H-bombs! Ecology Bombs! Sex Bombs! Information Bombs!” - Paul Virilio accosts Pope Francis as the Pink Nun

"If you could only date a woman with the world's greatest ass, or a woman with the world's greatest tits, which would you choose and why?"
"I would rather die than live in such a world."
- Al Gore and Bill Clinton on the Infinity Couch

"Draw forth the humors!" - Bill Clinton breaks to masturbate

“And I asked myself: 'What's a Minotaur doing in my bed where my wife should be?'" - Mike Huckabee

"I invented glamcore." - Bill Clinton

"Nerd culture and Men's Rights will never amount to anything without a Sting-figure." - Sting

“Break me off some of that rock, Kool-Aid man!” - Ronald Reagan campaigns in inner-city Philadelphia for the 1984 Presidential Campaign

"Let's take the truck out for one last fuck!" - Matthew McConaughey

"Loads! Right, blokes? haw haw haw!" - Sean Bean in a pub on the birds

"I was happiest as a boy! Oy I’d rather be sleepin’ it off on a cot by a coal stove!” - Sean Bean

"A woman's sex is not a clean place to put your hands." - Terrence Howard

"Shine up this chair with that varnish, show me who you fucking are!" - FDR to a Ziegfeld girl, flames, laughter, wild late night clarinet runs

"Slake the thirst of the Ancients." - the Voice

"Homogenized milk? How can you drink that shit?" - Foodie Clinton slaps a carton from Al Gore's hand, curds still speckling his lips

“The commune! the barricades! A post-restoration atmosphere of social climbing and mystical orientalist revenge!” - Classified State Dept. Memo on Power Vacuums

"A hot fuck on a lava field is what every man deserves!" - FDR, the Territory of Hawaii

"Oh they were big back in the 90's, or as I call them, the Late 80's." - Michael Douglas explains neon sunglasses to his grandchildren

“Upside down! A man could die at any moment!” - T.R. vampire fucking some mules

"That thigh gap tho..." - Teddy Roosevelt, Carnegie Stables

"All that matters is jazz and tail." - young GI Bill Clinton snapping his fingers to Max Roach in a dingy jazz bar on a hot summer day in Occupied Tokyo

“Only God can judge us.” - Miley Cyrus

Watch It, It's For You

HBO: Not just TV, expensive trash fantasy realism made safe for neo-liberal prestige consumption.

AMC: Adult drama without the unpleasantness of cursing or tits

Showtime: Let's be fucking extreme and novelly titillating (for one season)

Amazon: What do you want to watch? Mr. Bezos has no idea!

Netflix: We're a content producer now, but our dependence on the physical and intellectual property infrastructure of larger companies ensures nothing will ever really change.

PBS: Look at this shit that fell off a lorry, plus, yeah I think Ken Burns is coming over with his new 10-part doc Corn

CNN: Spectacle you can use

FOX: Mold at the speed of light

NHK: Missives from America’s near future as a graying debtor nation in love with cartoon animals

BBC America: Brits as they really are, that is, as they think Americans want them to be

RT: Those fellow travelers were wrong, but you are right.

ESPN: The Worldwide Leader in Chattel

Network TV: Like nutrition labels, specifically made for you, and equally preoccupied by lies.

Basic Cable: Reality shows mixed with vague memories of content or purpose.

Golf: Golf.

Weather: Predictable and serene, but online, fluids lurk.

Al Jazeera: Pure enough for Medina or the faculty lounge.

Bloomberg: The unprecedented number of news crawls crowding the screen is a metaphor for the treadmill you are currently on.

YouTube: You've never even heard of Nam June Paik.

A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away. . . .

"All the retching and bitching and hatred for the last three Star Wars movies then Disney gives them a minute of a new one and they roll over like bitches in heat! Everything you need to know about Americans right there--they'll take it every time." - James Cameron to Kathryn Bigelow, celebrity tour of Guantanamo Bay

"Surely we can't criticize popular culture in this, the best of all possible worlds." - Robert Downey Jr. at the Korean DMZ

“All the sex in this movie is practical effects." - J.J. Abrams, Star Wars: Eddie Bauer Edition!

"Star Wars is, and it always has been, pure California."
- George Lucas, Episode VIII: The Promise and Peril of the Bay

“Of course I'm Hispanic." - Jeb Bush to George Lucas

"After releasing the IP to Disney, I was finally able to progress beyond the anal phase." - George Lucas

"Après Felicity, le déluge." - JJ Abrams

"Star Wars was never sci-fi, and it was never fantasy. It was post-modern pastiche, the first modern blockbuster, the death of genre." - literary genius George R. R. Martin

“Why bother creating when to suck it down is so much better?” - Hayden Christensen to that kid and Jawa #6 at FanCon Omaha 2016

“I'm just one of those people, I wake up in the middle of the night and I think: how can I tell the same story again and again.” - JJ, Episode IX: Escape from Marin County

"When Harrison broke his leg, they offered me the part, but I turned it down because Abrams wouldn't let me shoot first." - William Petersen

"Our only hope is to convince people they still care about Star Wars."
"On the contrary, people don't know they are allowed to not care about Star Wars."
- Samantha Power and Clinton Campaign Chair John Podesta

"Ungrateful welp, the Star Wars were fought for your benefit."
- John McCain

"Harrison Ford's so fucking old, he needs a facelift."
"What, so he can look like Carrie Fisher?"
"Oh yeah, she like got hit by a hot garbage truck, right?"
"Hey, man, come on, she has a disease, it's not her fault she bought that mountain of cocaine."
- Stormtrooper extras in two distinct time periods on the sets of both Schindler's List and Star Wars VII 

"I'm still waiting for my call." - Billy Dee Williams

"It's really a shame that Lando died in Return of the Jedi."
- George Lucas consulting with JJ Abrams on set


Black Star Wars: A Pop Musical Extravaganza

Starring...

Luke Skywalker    ...    Andre 3000
Princess Leia      ...     Alicia Keys
Obi-Wan Kenobi   ...   Fred Williamson
Han Solo         ...        Justin Timberlake
Chewbacca       ...       Yao Ming
R2-D2           ...           Peter Dinklage
C-3PO           ...           Reggie Watts
Lando Calrissian   ...   Terrence Howard
Yoda            ...             Robert De Niro
Jabba the Hutt     …    Aretha Franklin
Darth Vader       ...       Cee Lo Green
Grand Moff Tarkin   ...  Christoph Waltz
Emperor Palpatine  ...  Ronald Reagan
the voice of every Stormtrooper  ...  Louis C.K.

The Race Is On And We're So Hard We Can Hardly Walk

"After [Marco] Rubio officially became speaker [of the Florida House of Representatives], then-Florida Gov. Jeb Bush presented him with a golden sword called 'Chang' -- 'the sword of a great conservative warrior.' Bush elaborated on what the sword meant:

‘Chang is a mystical warrior. Chang is somebody who believes in conservative principles, believes in entrepreneurial capitalism, believes in moral values that underpin a free society. I rely on Chang with great regularity in my public life. He has been by my side, and sometimes I let him down. But Chang, this mystical warrior, has never let me down.’”

- excerpts from The Daily Signal and The Gainesville Sun

Much later, at New York City Park Supervisor for Life Bill Clinton’s apartment in Harlem, Al Gore grows restless on the couch after an extended idyll….

“This whole goddam Sword of Chang thing that’s come up, it’s like when all the Neo-Cons were eating hashish with those Iranian mystics and trying to get them off the terrorist watch list as 'freedom fighters.'"
“The obscure occultism of the rich whites!”
“I don’t know what this episode means but it explains everything--maybe the entire conservative dialectic. This may be the grimmest election we've faced in our short lives. Where we see the putrid corrupt inebriating uselessness of the mid-terms spreading to the presidential election, American elections aren't even safe for entertainment anymore!”
- Gore slowly pokes his head out of the blankets as Clinton makes them banana pancakes

“Holy shit, this bourbon and this weed together are incredible. I feel like a Congressman.” - Clinton, Mad Men series finale costume party

"Al, I’ve been out of town for three weeks, Hillary's never here, I told you you could use her room, why are you still sleeping on the couch?"
"It's the only thing I still believe in."

“I tried to go to sleep early, but Next Friday was on, what was I to do?” - Al Gore, day after Daylight Savings Time

"Somebody needs to put some sex into the ticket, and only I am truly Hispanic on an electoral level!" - Marco Rubio announces his bid for Vice President

"I heard you in there with her. How was it?"
"Man, we don't have to share everything."

"I haven't walked on a sidewalk alone for over 20 years. My feet have never even touched pavement in New York." - Limo Clinton

"I can look like Joseph McCarthy or I can talk like Ricky Ricardo, I can't do both!" - Chevy Cruz in frustration to the team

"The left doesn't need theories, it needs money, guns, and a story worth fighting for." - Hillary Clinton, stopping by Bill’s apartment to get a scarf, walks through Al’s reading group in the living room

"When you reach a certain age, all late night communications are perceived as booty calls.”
“But what if you're just lonely?"
"Then they are still booty calls."
- Al Gore on Clinton's couch, Day 167

“Yo, Hillary and I order the same fucking bowl of shit at Chipotle, I'll vote for her and do whatever the Beast tells me” - a male feminist

"We're mixed on Outer Heaven." - Clinton camp on the Forever War

"How are you my friend?"
"Aight."
"Hey, you know that fat white guy that come in here?"
"The white guy with the beard, never takes off his sunglasses?"
"Yeah. I think that's Al Gore."
"Al Gore? The fuck?!"
- at the bodega

"A man can be any race he wants!" - Jeb from the kitchen while Clinton and Gore break up laughing in the living room with the bong

"Can I fuck the Object?" - Socratic Clinton

"It's amazing how you never forget how to ride a bike but do forget that you're an adult, agentic being capable of self-directed, transformative action." - Al Gore on Bill Clinton's Couch, Day 589

"I'm gonna be crashing down in Brooklyn a lot more now at Hill's new place, so, you know, whatever's in the fridge, just go ahead and eat it."
"Hey, maybe I can help out with the campaign?"
"Yeah...definitely."
- Bill & Al

"What if the mystery is not, what after death?, because we ourselves are that death, life is dying."
"Would you go to sleep?"
- Al Gore immediately starts verbalizing his thoughts to Clinton as the latter staggers to the bathroom in the middle of the night to pee

“Honestly, this is all the man ever wanted after the end of the Vietnam War and losing the presidency: to be with foreigners, away from this horrible country but swathed in its great power.” - John Kerry, crashing in the guest bed on town for business, some orange juice in the morning, and making conversation with Al, who hasn’t moved from the couch in 16 hours

"The absence of any form of non-sublimated sexual expression in my life is painful yes, but I've come to accept it as a given." - Al Gore

"Then you just spill it into her cloaca, man, it's easy." - Tucan Clinton

"My daughter-in-law spanks her children, I don't object really, but it seems hickish." - Al Gore to Bill Clinton, who at first seems indifferent, then smiles, then slowly builds into uncontrolled yet knowing laughter, but never explains what he found so funny

"You know I'd wake up every morning and be standing there in the mirror putting on my tie, and the devil on my shoulder'ld say, 'You can have it all,' and the angel on my other shoulder'ld say, 'They'll all find out what you really are,' and the devil would reply, 'And they'll all forgive you, you're too handsome for them not to.'" - John Edwards stopping by Gore's Clinton Couch

"What the hell is a Plus-Size Model?"
"It's a euphemism for a woman who is actually attractive."
- Clinton and Gore, Couch Day 10325

“Maybe I should train for a marathon."
"Haw haw haw, yeah, you should, bub."
- Al Gore & Bill Clinton, watching reruns of Frasier

"The door--THE DOOR!!" - Al Gore's been reading too much Lovecraft

“Can we crowd source democracy.” - TIME Magazine to its readership of Last Men

"I'm the JFK of the GOP. Same deal right down the line." - Rubio

"I don't talk to a coven of witches." - Rand

"I don't have to make a speech like some damn populist, I'm running a 21st Century campaign: in Brooklyn, with tech money, from the cold remove of the video screen." - Hill

"You won't see her, just the digital detritus of her, like Passover." - Joe Podesta on the Campaign’s Non-Visibility Transparency policy

"We can do it too!" - Ed Milliband

"What about your effect on 2016?"
"Haw! Chuck, I'm a starchild.”
- Chuck Todd and BO

“A glass of zin will kill the sun!” - Hillary on the dark stealth carrier USS Atticus Finch