Beer Die Quotes

Ludicrous? Seems like wherever you go, trouble follows you.” “Look, Deputy Lawson. I had nothing to do with all this. I was just have a beer and minding my own business until this woman sat down next to me and said, ‘Can you help me, Mr. Ludef…’ She didn’t even finish the sentence. The next thing I know she’s laying on the deck. I don’t know who she is or why she sought me out.” “Seems like I’ve heard this story before. You have a nasty reputation of people dying around you.” “You know better. That comes with the occupation.” “And you know the drill. Don’t leave town until we get to the bottom of this.

The beer and the wurst were wonderful, but I was dying to be back in the South, where the livin' was easy, where the fish were jumpin', where the cotton grew high.

I was lying there trying to control the fear. I did not know much about this uremic poisoning. A woman I'd known slightly in Texas had died of it after drinking a bottle of beer ever hour, night and day, for two weeks.

I didn't want to die, but now I needed to figure out how to turn my life into one I wanted to live.

One more victim sucked in by John. You get into the room with him and you just fall into a warm pool of beer and video games and penis jokes, staring at the universe with him and saying, "Do you believe this shit?

2 p.m. beer nothing matters but flopping on a mattress with cheap dreams and a beer as the leaves die and the horses die and the landladies stare in the halls; brisk the music of pulled shades, a last man's cave in an eternity of swarm and explosion; nothing but the dripping sink, the empty bottle, euphoria, youth fenced in, stabbed and shaven, taught words propped up to die.

Hey, I’ve been alive for a very, very long time. Boring,” she sang out. “Gotta do something for kicks, and a good apocalypse every now and then fills the cracks. It’s like the Super Bowl for us gods…but without the beer and everyone could die. Fun, right?

You have five minutes to call someone, anyone, I don't care who, and order me the finest blend of coffee that rat hole town has, and a dozen beers. If it's not sitting on this table..." a slender finger pointed furiously at the table in question,"... in one hour, you die" - Faith telling Jacob

The old man had been tanned by the light of too many beer signs, and it just goes to show that you can’t live on three packs of Chesterfields and a fifth of bourbon a day without starting to drift far too fuckin’ wide in the turns.

I talk better when I’m drinking coffee.” “Me, too. If by coffee you mean beer, and by better you mean louder.

Welcome to Undisclosed. Dreams Interpreted for Beer.

At forty-five, I feel grateful almost daily to be the adult I wished I could be when I was seventeen. I work on my arm strength at the gym; I've become pretty good with tools. At the same time, almost daily, I lose battles with the seventeen-year-old who's still inside me. I eat half a box of Oreos for lunch, I binge on TV, I make sweeping moral judgments. I run around in torn jeans, I drink martinis on a Tuesday night, I stare at beer-commercial cleavage. I define as uncool any group to which I can't belong. I feel the urge to key Range Rovers and slash their tires; I pretend I'm never going to die. You never stop waiting for the real story to start, because the only real story, in the end, is that you die.

Had she really understood then that those were the best of times? That she was in heaven? She thinks she did understand, yes. Understood she had been given a great gift. Doing the crossword in a train carriage, Stephen with a can of beer ("I will only drink beer on trains, nowhere else, don't ask me why"), glasses halfway down his nose, reading out clues. The real secret was that when they looked at each other, they each thought they had the better deal.

See that little stream — we could walk to it in two minutes. It took the British a month to walk to it — a whole empire walking very slowly, dying in front and pushing forward behind. And another empire walked very slowly backward a few inches a day, leaving the dead like a million bloody rugs. No Europeans will ever do that again in this generation.” “Why, they’ve only just quit over in Turkey,” said Abe. “And in Morocco —” “That’s different. This western-front business couldn’t be done again, not for a long time. The young men think they could do it but they couldn’t. They could fight the first Marne again but not this. This took religion and years of plenty and tremendous sureties and the exact relation that existed between the classes. The Russians and Italians weren’t any good on this front. You had to have a whole-souled sentimental equipment going back further than you could remember. You had to remember Christmas, and postcards of the Crown Prince and his fiancée, and little cafés in Valence and beer gardens in Unter den Linden and weddings at the mairie, and going to the Derby, and your grandfather’s whiskers.” “General Grant invented this kind of battle at Petersburg in sixty- five.” “No, he didn’t — he just invented mass butchery. This kind of battle was invented by Lewis Carroll and Jules Verne and whoever wrote Undine, and country deacons bowling and marraines in Marseilles and girls seduced in the back lanes of Wurtemburg and Westphalia. Why, this was a love battle — there was a century of middle-class love spent here. This was the last love battle.

A real man would never cry in public unless he was watching a movie in which a heroic dog died to save its master.Or if Heidi klum unbuttoned her blouse. Or he accidently dropped a full case of beer.

A Song I wish you were here, dear, I wish you were here. I wish you sat on the sofa and I sat near. The handkerchief could be yours, the tear could be mine, chin-bound. Though it could be, of course, the other way around. I wish you were here, dear, I wish you were here. I wish we were in my car and you'd shift the gear. We'd find ourselves elsewhere, on an unknown shore. Or else we'd repair to where we've been before. I wish you were here, dear, I wish you were here. I wish I knew no astronomy when stars appear, when the moon skims the water that sighs and shifts in its slumber. I wish it were still a quarter to dial your number. I wish you were here, dear, in this hemisphere, as I sit on the porch sipping a beer. It's evening, the sun is setting; boys shout and gulls are crying. What's the point of forgetting if it's followed by dying?

Probably we’d have been better off born in nineteenth-century Russia. I’d have been Prince So-and-so and you Count Such-and-such. We’d go hunting together, fight, be rivals in love, have our metaphysical complaints, drink beer watching the sunset from the shores of the Black Sea. In our later years, the two of us would be implicated in the Something-or-other Rebellion and exiled to Siberia, where we’d die. Brilliant, don’t you think? Me, if I’d been born in the nineteenth century, I’m sure I could have written better novels. Maybe not your Dostoyevsky, but a known second-rate novelist. And what would you have been doing? Maybe you’d only have been Count Such-and-such straight through. That wouldn’t be so bad, just being Count Such-and-such. That’d be nice and nineteenth century.

Albeit i may die sleep not in the coffen of gold and even beer no fruit; but my impact after depart is my particular to paradise.

White trash had a way of finding their graves. Along with wife beating and beer sucking, dying was probably their only core competency.

You can rock and roll all night, but when the music dies out and the beer wears off, you’re able to think. And dream big dreams.

A new beer with sweat running down the sides slides into view and Pigpen sidles up beside me grinning like a crazy man. “Everyone’s dying to know who you’re texting with. It’s like you’re a twelve-year-old girl chained to that damn cell. Have you started your period yet?

They’re all over me I smell their beer breath mixed with my sweat I can’t answer all the questions, I can barely think straight Now I’m alone in the room To be hard you must be alone To withstand this shit you must be hard The logic works itself out right in front you Be alone as much as you can If you want to hit like a ton of fire You have to get to the essential number One

I went outside after my beer and looked down into the ocean and saw a stingray flapping in the water, a jagged C torn into his body and ribbons of blood running out, same color as mine, as anything's, and I knew that stingray had been chewed by something because that is all the ocean is -- big hole full of things chewing each other -- and it's odd that people go to the beach and stare at the waving water and feel relaxed because what they are looking at is just the blue curtain over a wild violence, lives eating lives, the unstoppable chew, and I wondered if any of those vacationing people feel all the blood rushing under the surface, and I wondered if the fleshy, dying underside of the ocean is what they're really after as they stare -- that ferocious pulse under all things placid.

When you're the sane brother of a schizophrenic identical twin, the tricky thing about saving yourself is the blood it leaves on your hands--the little inconvenience of the look-alike corpse at your feet. And if you're into both survival of the fittest and being your brother's keeper--if you've promised your dying mother--then say so long to sleep and hello to the middle of the night. Grab a book or a beer. Get used to Letterman's gap-toothed smile of the absurd, or the view of the bedroom ceiling, or the indifference of random selection. Take it from a godless insomniac. Take it from the uncrazy twin--the guy who beat the biochemical rap.

The Angels had fun with them. They laid the deceased out on a pool table and took turns pouring beer over him, ritualistically, you know? They stripped this embalmed figure of his wrappings before the ritual. At the end, they took Bobby and Ty—at knifepoint—and forced them to kiss the deceased’s lips and say, ‘I love you, man.’ But the worst was yet to come. Without becoming vulgar and utterly gross, let me just say the Angels gave them a choice: die slowly of knife wounds or fellate the corpse on the table.

This is where the pivotal events of my childhood unfolded, while I ate banana and root beer Popsicles, two by two, tucking the sticks neatly under the skirt of the chair. It's where Sunnybank Lad met Lady, Ken met his friend Flicka, Atlanta burned, Manderley burned, Lassie came home, Jim ran away, Alice got small, Wilbur got big, David Copperfield was born, Beth died, and, on an endless gloomy winter afternoon, Jody shot his yearling.

She wanted to die. No. Not really, she didn’t. That was just the beer and gin and crème de menthe talking, their liquid voices sloshing up from the depths of her uneasy stomach. What she really wanted was to already be dead.

I drink because I don't stand a chance and I know it. I couldn't drive a truck and I couldn't get on the cops with my build. I got to sling beer and sing when I just want to sing. I drink because I got responsibilities that I can't handle...I am not a happy man. I got a wife and children and I don't happen to be a hard-working man. I never wanted a family...Yes, your mother works hard. I love my wife and I love my children. But shouldn't a man have a better life? Maybe someday it will be that the Unions will arrange for a man to work and to have time for himself too. But that won't be in my time. Now, it's work hard all the time or be a bum... no in-between. When I die, nobody will remember me for long. No one will say, "He was a man who loved his family and believed in the Union." All they will say is," Too bad. But he was nothing but a drunk no matter which way you look at it." Yes they'll say that.

I want to tell you a story. I'm going to ask you all to close your eyes while I tell you the story. I want you to listen to me. I want you to listen to yourselves. Go ahead. Close your eyes, please. This is a story about a little girl walking home from the grocery store one sunny afternoon. I want you to picture this little girl. Suddenly a truck races up. Two men jump out and grab her. They drag her into a nearby field and they tie her up and they rip her clothes from her body. Now they climb on. First one, then the other, raping her, shattering everything innocent and pure with a vicious thrust in a fog of drunken breath and sweat. And when they're done, after they've killed her tiny womb, murdered any chance for her to have children, to have life beyond her own, they decide to use her for target practice. They start throwing full beer cans at her. They throw them so hard that it tears the flesh all the way to her bones. Then they urinate on her. Now comes the hanging. They have a rope. They tie a noose. Imagine the noose going tight around her neck and with a sudden blinding jerk she's pulled into the air and her feet and legs go kicking. They don't find the ground. The hanging branch isn't strong enough. It snaps and she falls back to the earth. So they pick her up, throw her in the back of the truck and drive out to Foggy Creek Bridge. Pitch her over the edge. And she drops some thirty feet down to the creek bottom below. Can you see her? Her raped, beaten, broken body soaked in their urine, soaked in their semen, soaked in her blood, left to die. Can you see her? I want you to picture that little girl. Now imagine she's white.

I didn’t want to die, but now I needed to figure out how to turn my life into one I wanted to live.

But I still think that’s a pretty fine age. Maybe the best age. You can rock and roll all night, but when the music dies out and the beer wears off, you’re able to think. And dream big dreams. The mean Patrol Boy cuts you down to size eventually, and if you start out small, why, there’s almost nothing left but the cuffs of your pants when he’s done with you.

They were born, they grew up in the gutters, they went to work at twelve, they passed through a brief blossoming period of beauty and sexual desire, they married at twenty, they were middle-aged at thirty, they died, for the most part, at sixty. Heavy physical work, the care of home and children, petty quarrels with neighbors, films, football, beer, and above all, gambling, filled up the horizon of their minds. To keep them in control was not difficult.

Australian shrimp barbecue, when the beers and the rums mix with the hard sun headaches and widespread Saturday night violence spreads across the country behind closed front doors. Truth is, Bich said, Australian childhoods are so idyllic and joyous, so filled with beach visits and backyard games of cricket, that Australian adulthoods can’t possibly meet our childhood expectations. Our perfect early lives in this vast island paradise doom us to melancholy because we know, in the hard honest bones beneath our dubious bronze skin, that we will never again be happier than we were once before. She said we live in the greatest country on earth but we’re actually all miserable deep down inside and the junk cures the misery and the junk industry will never die because Australian misery will never die.

Joyce turns her face up to the sun and closes her eyes. 'Well, isn't this lovely, Ron? I never knew I liked beer. Imagine if I'd died at seventy? I never would have known.

That’s why I’ve switched from beer to whiskey—fewer calories.

Probably we’d have been better off born in nineteenth-century Russia. I’d have been Prince So-and-so and you Count Such-and-such. We’d go hunting together, fight, be rivals in love, have our metaphysical complaints, drink beer watching the sunset from the shores of the Black Sea. In our later years, the two of us would be implicated in the Something-or-other Rebellion and exiled to Siberia, where we’d die. Brilliant, don’t you think?

Kant ate but once a day, and drank no beer. Of this liquor, (I mean the strong black beer,) he was, indeed, the most determined enemy. If ever a man died prematurely, Kant would say—’He has been drinking beer, I presume.

This town has done us dirty This town has bled us dry We've been here for a long time And we'll be here 'til we die So we'll finish off the leavings Of blood and glue and beer And burn this bloody city down In the summer of the year

It was knock or go home and die. Rase knocked. The door opened with such alacrity that Rase wondered whether Gabriel had been standing on the other side, drawn to the door by the same uncanny instinct that had inspired him to torment Rase. "You said anytime," Rase said, before Gabriel could say anything. "I did." Gabriel seemed unperturbed at having his employer show up at his door. He stepped back to let Rase in. Rase had been expecting something in keeping with the rest of the building. Instead, Gabriel's apartment was shabby but spotless. It was one main room with a niche for the kitchen and a tiny bathroom that Rase could see through a narrow door that stood ajar. He walked to the center of the room and found himself only feet from Gabriel's bed, a sizable bed with a heavy iron frame. That stopped him in his tracks, and he stood there, wondering what to do with himself. "Beer?" Gabriel was so close that Rase could feel Gabriel's breath on his hair. "This isn't a social call," Rase said, not even trying to keep his voice steady. "Then why are your clothes still on?

He's tried to explain this a couple of times to a few of his buddies after about five beers. Like listen, listen. Imagine you live in this country, right? And there's a brutal war, and you witness and maybe participate in a horrific amount of violence, and you lose absolutely everyone you care about. Then you end up in this other country, where the culture and ways of doing things are completely foreign to you, and random assholes make fun of you for how you dress and act and talk while you're still coming to grips with the fact that everyone you love is gone and you can never go home again. Meanwhile, everyone around you is like "smile, motherfucker, you're in the Land of Plenty now, where there's a Starbucks on every corner and 500 channels on TV. You should be grateful! Why aren't you acting more grateful?" So you have to pretend to be grateful while you're dying inside. Sound like an traumatized, orphaned refugee? Also sounds like Steve fucking Rogers, Captain Goddamn America. Except that most refugees were part of a community of other people who were going through the same thing. Steve is all alone, the last damn unicorn, if the last unicorn had horrible screaming nightmares about the time when it helped to liberate Buchenwald.

A 1670 revision of the criminal code found yet another use for salt in France. To enforce the law against suicide, it was ordered that the bodies of people who took their own lives be salted, brought before a judge, and sentenced to public display. Nor could the accused escape their day in court by dying in the often miserable conditions of the prisons. They too would be salted and put on trial. Breton historians have discovered that in 1784 in the town of Cornouaille, Maurice LeCorre had died in prison and was ordered salted for trial. But due to some bureaucratic error, the corpse did not get a trial date and was found by a prison guard more than seven years later, not only salted but fermented in beer, at which point it was buried without trial.

I'm fine.My father's an arse, and my mum is dying and-oh my God,I'm so pissed." St. Clair looked at me again. His eyes were glassy like black marbles. "Pissed.Pissed.Pissed." "We know you're pissed at your dad," I said. "It's okay. You're right, he's a jerk." I mean what was I supposed to say? He just found out his mother has cancer. "Pissed is British for 'drunk,'" Mer said. "Oh," I said. "Well. You're definitely that, too." Meanwhile,The Couple was fighting. "Where have you been?" Rashmi asked. "You said you'd be home three hours ago!" Josh rolled his eyes. "Out.We've been out. Someone had to help him-" "And you call that helping? He's completely wasted. Catatonic. And you! God,you smell like car exhaust and armpits-" "He couldn't drink alone." "You were supposed to be watching out for him! What if something happened?" "Beer. Liquor. Thatsswhat happened. Don't be such a prude,Rash.

These July nights, you get thirsty for one more beer as the Phillies struggle and then in bed feel a terrific weariness, a bliss of inactivity that leads you to understand how men can die willingly, gladly, into an eternal release from the hell of having to perform.

The fact of the matter is that when I drink, I am 100 percent certifiably insane. Hopelessly, utterly, undeniably bat shit crazy. I do things that are abhorrent to me; anathema to my nature, my morals, and my upbringing. And once I start, I cannot stop the craziness. It just spirals on and on, ever downward, until I die or hit rock bottom. And even at rock bottom, despite all evidence that I should stop, I will grab a cold beer and a pick ax and keep digging deeper. It's insane. The only way I know to not be crazy is just not to drink.

Pulling to a stop in front of Aly’s house, I take a deep breath. With a flick of my wrist, I cut the engine and listen to the silence. I’ve sat in this exact spot more times than I can count. In many ways, Aly’s house is like my sanctuary. A place I go when my own home feels like a graveyard. I glance up at the bedroom window of the girl who knows me better than anyone, the only person I let see me cry after Dad died. I won’t let this experiment take that or her away from me. Tonight, I’m going to prove that Aly and I can go back to our normal, easy friendship. Throwing open my door, I trudge up her sidewalk, plant my feet outside her front door, and ring the bell. “Coming!” I step back and see Aly stick her head out of her second-story window. “No problem,” I call back up. “Take your time.” More time to get my head on straight. Aly disappears behind a film of yellow curtain, and I turn to look out at the quiet neighborhood. Up and down the street, the lights blink on, filling the air with a low hum that matches the thrumming of my nerves. Across the street, old Mr. Lawson sits at his usual perch under a gigantic American flag, drinking beer and mumbling to himself. Two little girls ride their bikes around the cul-de-sac, smiling and waving. Just a normal, run-of-the-mill Friday night. Except not. I thrust my hands into my pockets, jiggling the loose change from my Taco Bell run earlier tonight, and grab my pack of Trident. I toss a stick into my mouth and chew furiously. Supposedly, the smell of peppermint can calm your nerves. I grab a second stick and shove it in, too. With the clacking sound of Aly’s shoes approaching the door behind me, I remind myself again about tonight’s mission. All I need is focus. I take another deep breath for good measure and rock back on my heels, ready to greet my best friend. She opens the door, wearing a black dress molded to her skin, and I let the air out in one big huff.

Probably your biggest mistake was doing funk-dance to Unchained Melody,” the dog offered earnestly. “It’s a ballad, Alf, and to be honest, it’s one of the slowest songs I can think of. You’d have been better off doing a slow waltz to something with that tempo. The other factor may have been the large amount of beer you consumed beforehand.

A cell phone rang from the end table to my right and Kristen bolted up straight. She put her beer on the coffee table and dove across my lap for her phone, sprawling over me. My eyes flew wide. I’d never been that close to her before. I’d only ever touched her hand. If I pushed her down across my knees, I could spank her ass. She grabbed her phone and whirled off my lap. “It’s Sloan. I’ve been waiting for this call all day.” She put a finger to her lips for me to be quiet, hit the Talk button, and put her on speaker. “Hey, Sloan, what’s up?” “Did you send me a potato?” Kristen covered her mouth with her hand and I had to stifle a snort. “Why? Did you get an anonymous potato in the mail?” “Something is seriously wrong with you,” Sloan said. “Congratulations, he put a ring on it. PotatoParcel.com.” She seemed to be reading a message. “You found a company that mails potatoes with messages on them? Where do you find this stuff?” Kristen’s eyes danced. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. Do you have the other thing though?” “Yeeeess. The note says to call you before I open it. Why am I afraid?” Kristen giggled. “Open it now. Is Brandon with you?” “Yes, he’s with me. He’s shaking his head.” I could picture his face, that easy smile on his lips. “Okay, I’m opening it. It looks like a paper towel tube. There’s tape on the—AHHHHHH! Are you kidding me, Kristen?! What the hell!” Kristen rolled forward, putting her forehead to my shoulder in laughter. “I’m covered in glitter! You sent me a glitter bomb? Brandon has it all over him! It’s all over the sofa!” Now I was dying. I covered my mouth, trying to keep quiet, and I leaned into Kristen, who was howling, our bodies shaking with laughter. I must not have been quiet enough though. “Wait, who’s with you?” Sloan asked. Kristen wiped at her eyes. “Josh is here.” “Didn’t he have a date tonight? Brandon told me he had a date.” “He did, but he came back over after.” “He came back over?” Her voice changed instantly. “And what are you two doing? Remember what we talked about, Kristen…” Her tone was taunting. Kristen glanced at me. Sloan didn’t seem to realize she was on speaker. Kristen hit the Talk button and pressed the phone to her ear. “I’ll call you tomorrow. I love you!” She hung up on her and set her phone down on the coffee table, still tittering. “And what did you two talk about?” I asked, arching an eyebrow. I liked that she’d talked about me. Liked it a lot. “Just sexually objectifying you. The usual,” she said, shrugging. “Nothing a hot fireman like you can’t handle.” A hot fireman like you.I did my best to hide my smirk. “So do you do this to Sloan a lot?” I asked. “All the time. I love messing with her. She’s so easily worked up.” She reached for her beer. I chuckled. “How do you sleep at night knowing she’ll be finding glitter in her couch for the next month?” She took a swig of her beer. “With the fan on medium.” My laugh came so hard Stuntman Mike looked up and cocked his head at me. She changed the channel and stopped on HBO. Some show. There was a scene with rose petals down a hallway into a bedroom full of candles. She shook her head at the TV. “See, I just don’t get why that’s romantic. You want flower petals stuck to your ass? And who’s gonna clean all that shit up? Me? Like, thanks for the flower sex, let’s spend the next half an hour sweeping?” “Those candles are a huge fire hazard.” I tipped my beer toward the screen. “Right? And try getting wax out of the carpet. Good luck with that.” I looked at the side of her face. “So what do you think is romantic?” “Common sense,” she answered without thinking about it. “My wedding wouldn’t be romantic. It would be entertaining. You know what I want at my wedding?” she said, looking at me. “I want the priest from The Princess Bride. The mawage guy.

Every culture can be kind of defined by what they drink in order to avoid dying of diarrhea. In China it’s tea. In Africa it’s milk or animal blood. In Europe it was wine and beer.

When you have no imagination, dying is small beer; when you do have an imagination, dying is too much.

It goes like this: go to school, get brainwashed, go to college, get more brainwashed, drink beer, get a degree, get a job, get married, have kids, get promoted, get a mortgage, take a yearly vacation, buy stuff on the holidays, retire, take up golf, be a grandparent, get cancer and die. The matrix exists to make sure you follow this formula, so that you can do your part to support the very system that’s enslaving you. Except you think you’re free because you went to Maui for a week last June. That’s not freedom, my love. That’s a bone.

Something switches in mee in this vegan mayonnaise-filled moment. All my patience is gone. I'm in a vegan dive bar, smelling beer I don't care to drink with basketball and football games I don't care to watch blaring from the excessive amount of TVs around me. I'm sitting on a bar stool with uneven legs opposite of a man I no longer love. I am numb. I am done. Look, I just am.

In September 1942, a B-17 crashed in the Pacific, stranding nine men on a raft. Within a few days, one had died and the rest had gone mad. Two heard music and baying dogs. One was convinced that a navy plane was pushing the raft from behind. Two scuffled over an imaginary case of beer. Another shouted curses at a sky that he believed was full of bombers. Seeing a delusory boat, he pitched himself overboard and drowned. On day six, when a plane flew by, the remaining men had to confer to be sure that it was real. When they were rescued on day seven, they were too weak to wave their arms.

My mother who died young In an outlandish rhythm Would have been seventy now And perhaps dead in funeral time. So I may start to mourn As I would celebrate The first or second birthday Of a still-born baby. - Out of Season

How fun it would be to bounce on the back of Lidewij Vliegenthart’s bike down the brick streets, her curly red hair blowing into my face, the smell of the canals and cigarette smoke, all the people sitting outside the cafés drinking beer, saying their r’s and g’s in a way I’d never learn. I missed the future. Obviously I knew even before his recurrence that I’d never grow old with Augustus Waters. But thinking about Lidewij and her boyfriend, I felt robbed. I would probably never again see the ocean from thirty thousand feet above, so far up that you can’t make out the waves or any boats, so that the ocean is a great and endless monolith. I could imagine it. I could remember it. But I couldn’t see it again, and it occurred to me that the voracious ambition of humans is never sated by dreams coming true, because there is always the thought that everything might be done better and again.

They were born, they grew up in the gutters, they went to work at twelve, they passed through a brief blossoming-period of beauty and sexual desire, they married at twenty, they were middle-aged at thirty, they died, for the most part, at sixty. Heavy physical work, the care of home and children, petty quarrels with neighbours, films, football, beer and, above all, gambling, filled up the horizon of their minds. To keep them in control was not difficult.

Amanda said, “Isn’t it interesting: people never seem to bring liquor when somebody dies, have you noticed? Why not a case of beer? Or a bottle of really good wine? Just these everlasting casseroles, and who eats casseroles nowadays?

Who’s teasing? I’m telling him the truth. He ain’t going to have it. Neither one of ‘em going to have it. And I’ll tell you something else you not going to have. You not going to have no private coach with four red velvet chairs that swivel around in one place whenever you want ‘em to. No. and you not going to have your own special toilet and your own special-made eight-foot bed either. And a valet and a cook and a secretary to travel with you and do everything you say. Everything: get the right temperature in your hot-water bottle and make sure the smoking tobacco in the silver humidor is fresh each and every day. There’s something else you not going to have. You ever have five thousand dollars of cold cash money in your pocket and walk into a bank and tell the bank man you want such and such a house on such and such a street and he sell it to you right then? Well, you won’t ever have it. And you not going to have a governor’s mansion, or eight thousand acres of timber to sell. And you not going to have no ship under your command to sail on, no train to run, and you can join the 332nd if you want to and shoot down a thousand German planes all by yourself and land in Hitler’s backyard and whip him with your own hands, but you never going to have four stars on your shirt front, or even three. And you not going to have no breakfast tray brought in to you early in the morning with a red rose on it and two warm croissants and a cup of hot chocolate. Nope. Never. And no pheasant buried in coconut leaves for twenty days and stuffed with wild rice and cooked over a wood fire so tender and delicate it make you cry. And no Rothschild ’29 or even Beaujolais to go with it.” A few men passing by stopped to listen to Tommy’s lecture. “What’s going on?” they asked Hospital Tommy. “Feather refused them a beer,” said. The men laughed. “And no baked Alaska!” Railroad Tommy went on. “None! You never going to have that.” “No baked Alaska?” Guitar opened his eyes wide with horror and grabbed his throat.” You breaking my heart!” “Well, now. That’s something you will have—a broken heart.” Railroad Tommy’s eyes softened, but the merriment in them died suddenly. “And folly. A whole lot of folly. You can count on it.” “Mr. Tommy, suh,” Guitar sang in mock humility, “we just wanted a bottle of beer is all.” “Yeah,” said Tommy. “Yeah, well, welcome aboard.

Denver’s first permanent structure was said to be a saloon, and more beer is brewed here today than in any other American city, earning it the nickname the “Napa Valley of beer.” For one weekend in the fall it boasts the best selection on earth during the Great American Beer Festival, a New World Oktoberfest that gathers representatives from the nation’s best breweries to tap over 1,600 different kinds of beer—enough to get it listed in Guinness World Records for the most beers tapped in one place.

I simmer in the half-light of a stoop, raising beers under a pompadour on the first brisk night, pressure more potent than any barometer can read. To see your hand to the tramp of feet is a way to measure strangers. To feel your hair on my finger accidentally is common sense, a way of leading you to me as the watch moves. We return to our bed through the bakery smells of daybreak, sky palling, empty of jets. The schedule is suspended, then resumes like gray dead hands in the east, and I want you never to die.

...Not yet dry behind the ears, not old enough to buy a beer, but old enough to die for his country. He can recite to you the nomenclature of a machine gun or grenade launcher and use either one effectively if he must. He digs foxholes and latrines and can apply first aid like a professional. He can march until he is told to stop, or stop until he is told to march. He obeys orders instantly and without hesitation, but he is not without spirit or individual dignity. He is self-sufficient. ...He sometimes forgets to brush his teeth, but never to clean his rifle. He can cook his own meals, mend his own clothes, and fix his own hurts. If you're thirsty, he'll share his water with you; if you are hungry, food. He'll even split his ammunition with you in the midst of battle when you run low. He has learned to use his hands like weapons and weapons like they were his hands. He can save your life-or take it, because that is his job. He will often do twice the work of a civilian, draw half the pay, and still find ironic humor in it all. He has seen more suffering and death than he should have in his short lifetime. He has wept in public and in private, for friends who have fallen in combat and is unashamed. He feels every note of the National Anthem vibrate through his body while at rigid attention, while tempering the burning desire to "square-away" those around him who haven't bothered to stand, remove their hat, or even stop talking. ...Just as did his father, grandfather, and great-grandfather, he is paying the price for our freedom. Beardless or not, he is not a boy. He is the American Fighting Man that has kept this country free for over two hundred years. He has asked nothing in return, except our friendship and understanding. Remember him, always, for he has earned our respect and admiration with his blood. And now we have women over there in danger, doing their part in this tradition of going to war when our nation calls us to do so. As you go to bed tonight, remember this. A short lull, a little shade, and a picture of loved ones in their helmets.

I'll be able to vote this year. And be drafted. But not drink. Legally, anyway. Weird that I'll be old enough to die for my country but not buy beer. That regulation is screwed up. If I can be taught to fly a fighter jet, I should be trusted with a six-pack of Corona.

I hate you," she said. I felt her hatred. I could smell it, even hear it coming out of her, but I sneered again. "I hope so," I said. "Because there must be something pretty fine about a guy who rates your hatred." Then she said a strange thing; I remember it clearly. "I hope you die of heart failure," she said. "Right there in that chair." It gave her keen satisfaction, even though I laughed. She walked away smiling. She stood at the bar again, waiting for more beer, and her eyes were fastened on me, brilliant with her strange wish, and I was unconfortable but still laughing. Now she was dancing again, gliding from table to table with her tray, and every time I looked at her she smiled her wish, until it had a mysterious effect on me, and I became conscious of my inner organism, of the beat of my heart and the flutter of my stomach. I felt that she would not come back to my table again, and I remember that I was glad of it, and that a strange restlessness came over me, so that I was anxious to get away from that place, and away from the range of her persistent smile.

To love is to lose, Sam. Unfortunately, it’s just that simple. Maybe not today but someday. Maybe not when she’s too young and you’re too young, but you see that being old doesn’t help. Maybe not your wife or your girlfriend or your mother, but you see that friends die, too. I could not spare you this any more than I could spare you puberty. It is the inevitable condition of humanity. It is exacerbated by loving but also simply by leaving your front door, by seeing what’s out there in the world, by inventing computer programs that help people. You are afraid of time, Sam. Some sadness has no remedy. Some sadness you can’t make better.” “So what the hell do I do?” “Be sad.” “For how long?” “Forever.” “But then why isn’t everyone walking around miserable all the time?” “Because ice cream still tastes good. And sunny and seventy-five is still a lovely day. And funny movies make you laugh, and work is sometimes fulfilling, and a beer with a friend is nice. And other people love you too.” “And that’s enough?” “There is no enough. You are the paragon of animals, my love. You aspire to such greatness, to miracle, to newness and wonder. And that’s great. I’m so proud of you. But you forgot about the part that’s been around for time immemorial. Love, death, loss. You’ve run up against it. And there’s no getting around or over it. You stop and build your life right there at the base of that wall. But it’s okay. That’s where everyone else is too. Everyone else is either there or on their way. There is no other side, but there’s plenty of space there to build a life and plenty of company. Welcome to the wall, Sam.

Ten derde: ze spuiten er een zoutoplossing in die zo hels smerig is dat er een bittere smaak door je mond trekt, een smaak die het resultaat lijkt van een innige samenwerking tussen Voldemort, The Joker en Satan zelf. Of nee, erger - Winnie de Poeh. Dat spoelen dan ze namelijk in een apart kamertje, en daar hangt hij, op een scherm aan het plafond: De Beer Aan Wie Je Voortaan Altijd Moet Denken Als Je Moet Kotsen, De Beer Die Je Tong Belegt Met Ellende, Hij Die De Ware Verspreider Is Van Het Kwaad, Hij Die Zo Snel Mogelijk In Een Eeuwige WInterslaap Gebracht Dient Te Worden: Winnie de fokking Poeh.

My master, sooner or later, will die of his dyspepsia. Old man Goldfield is already doomed by his greed. The autumn leaves have mostly fallen. All that has life must lose it. Since there seems so little point in living, perhaps those who die young are the only creatures wise. If one heeds the sages who assembled here today, mankind has already sentenced itself to extinction by suicide. If we don't watch out, even cats may find their individualities developing along the lethal crushing pattern forecast for these two-legged loons. It's an appalling prospect. Depression weighs upon me. Perhaps a sip of Sampei's beer would cheer me up.

the drug had been proven by scientists to be safer than alcohol. He wanted to prove it again. So he sat next to several large cases of beer, a fake joint in his hand and a real joint in his pocket. For every hit the mayor took of alcohol, Mason pledged, he would take a hit of marijuana—and we would see who died first.7

Terence, this is stupid stuff: You eat your victuals fast enough; There can’t be much amiss, ’tis clear, To see the rate you drink your beer. But oh, good Lord, the verse you make, It gives a chap the belly-ache. The cow, the old cow, she is dead; It sleeps well, the horned head: We poor lads, ’tis our turn now To hear such tunes as killed the cow. Pretty friendship ’tis to rhyme Your friends to death before their time Moping melancholy mad: Come, pipe a tune to dance to, lad.’ Why, if ’tis dancing you would be, There’s brisker pipes than poetry. Say, for what were hop-yards meant, Or why was Burton built on Trent? Oh many a peer of England brews Livelier liquor than the Muse, And malt does more than Milton can To justify God’s ways to man. Ale, man, ale’s the stuff to drink For fellows whom it hurts to think: Look into the pewter pot To see the world as the world’s not. And faith, ’tis pleasant till ’tis past: The mischief is that ’twill not last. Oh I have been to Ludlow fair And left my necktie God knows where, And carried half way home, or near, Pints and quarts of Ludlow beer: Then the world seemed none so bad, And I myself a sterling lad; And down in lovely muck I’ve lain, Happy till I woke again. Then I saw the morning sky: Heigho, the tale was all a lie; The world, it was the old world yet, I was I, my things were wet, And nothing now remained to do But begin the game anew. Therefore, since the world has still Much good, but much less good than ill, And while the sun and moon endure Luck’s a chance, but trouble’s sure, I’d face it as a wise man would, And train for ill and not for good. ’Tis true, the stuff I bring for sale Is not so brisk a brew as ale: Out of a stem that scored the hand I wrung it in a weary land. But take it: if the smack is sour, The better for the embittered hour; It should do good to heart and head When your soul is in my soul’s stead; And I will friend you, if I may, In the dark and cloudy day. There was a king reigned in the East: There, when kings will sit to feast, They get their fill before they think With poisoned meat and poisoned drink. He gathered all that springs to birth From the many-venomed earth; First a little, thence to more, He sampled all her killing store; And easy, smiling, seasoned sound, Sate the king when healths went round. They put arsenic in his meat And stared aghast to watch him eat; They poured strychnine in his cup And shook to see him drink it up: They shook, they stared as white’s their shirt: Them it was their poison hurt. —I tell the tale that I heard told. Mithridates, he died old.

KRÁKUMÁL [...] 25. We struck with our swords! My soul is glad, for I know that Balder’s father’s benches for a banquet are made ready. We’ll toss back toasts of ale from bent trees of the skulls; no warrior bewails his death in the wondrous house of Fjolnir. Not one word of weakness will I speak in Vidrir’s hall. 26. We struck with our swords! The sons of Aslaug all would rouse the wrath of Hild here with their ruthless sword-blades, if they fathomed fully how far I have traveled, how so many serpents stab me with their poison. My son’s hearts will help them: they have their mother’s lineage. 27. We struck with our swords! Soon my life is ended; Goinn scathes me sorely, settles in my heart’s hall; I wish the wand of Vidrir would wound Æelle, one day. My sons must feel great fury that their father is put to death; my daring swains won’t suffer in silence when they hear this. 28. We struck with our swords! I have stood in the ranks at fifty-one folk-battles, foremost in the lance-meet. Never did I dream that a different king should ever be found braver than me— I bloodied spears when young. Æsir will ask us to feast; no anguish for my death. 29. I desire my death now. The disir call me home, whom Herjan hastens onward from his hall, to take me. On the high bench, boldly, beer I’ll drink with the Gods; hope of life is lost now— laughing shall I die!

You don’t even have to wear her down. You already managed that. I don’t think you’re taking proper advantage of the situation. Dude, you died like right in front of her. That’s going to buy so many Sundays where you don’t have to run errands or go to church or do anything but sit in your chair with a beer in hand, watching whatever sport happens to be on that day. Also, I bet you could get a real increase in the amount of blowjobs offered. Don’t expect that to last though. They get super embarrassed when they have to go to the doc for jaw pain. Yeah, stick to the football plan. Every time she asks you to go grocery shopping on Sunday, kind of put your hand to your heart and wince a little as you agree. It’ll work every time.” His brother was such an ass.

Darren says his mum told him a secret recently about Australians. She said this secret would make him a rich man. She said the greatest secret about Australia is the nation's inherent misery. Bich Dang laughs at the ads on telly with Paul Hogan putting another shrimp on the barbie. She said foreign visitors should rightfully be advised about what happens five hours later at that Australian shrimp barbecue, when the beers and the rums mix with the hard sun headaches and widespread Saturday night violence spreads across the country behind closed front doors. Truth is, Bich said, Australian childhoods are so idyllic and joyous, so filled with beach visits and backyard games of cricket, that Australian adulthoods can’t possibly meet our childhood expectations. Our perfect early lives in this vast island paradise doom us to melancholy because we know, in the hard honest bones beneath our dubious bronze skin, that we will never again be happier than we were once before. She said we live in the greatest country on earth but we’re actually all miserable deep down inside and the junk cures the misery and the junk industry will never die because Australian misery will never die.

Time and again, when the goblets passed and seasoned fighters got flushed with beer they would pledge themselves to protect Heorot and wait for Grendel with whetted swords. But when dawn broke and day crept in over each empty, blood-spattered bench, the floor of the mead-hall where they had feasted would be slick with slaughter. And so they died, faithful retainers, and my following dwindled.

The writer found that certain freshwater crustaceans, namely Californian species of Daphnia, copepods, and Gammarus when indifferent to light can be made intensely positively heliotropic by adding some acid to the fresh water, especially the weak acid CO2. When carbonated water (or beer) to the extent of about 5 c.c. or 10 c.c. is slowly and carefully added to 50 c.c. of fresh water containing these Daphnia, the animals will become intensely positive and will collect in a dense cluster on the window side of the dish. Stronger acids act in the same way but the animals are likely to die quickly. . . Alcohols act in the same way. In the case of Gammarus the positive heliotropism lasts only a few seconds, while in Daphnia it lasts from 10 to 50 minutes and can be renewed by the further careful addition of some CO2.

Perhaps you are repulsed by me. Well, perhaps you are the one with the problem, not I. Perhaps you are the repulsive one. Perhaps you have never cared enough about anything in your life to weep at its loss. If that is the case, it is I who pity you. You will go through your brutish existence experiencing the small pleasures of taking things that are not yours, going places you are not welcome, sticking your elbow into the legally purchased space of another. Then you will die. Congratulations: That is your life. I hope you are happy with it. I hope you don’t regret, on your deathbed, that you never felt love, or joy, or loss. Yes, loss. There is a profound sweet melancholy in the experience of loss. It is the most delectable and pungent spice on the spice rack of life. Too bad you won’t taste it, buddy. I guess it doesn’t go with burgers and beer.

Live free or die,” he muttered, and it suddenly occurred to him that for the first time in his life, he was actually, totally free. Alex was a product of the public school system, and since childhood he’d been taught that America was a free country. The older he grew, however, the more he realized that American freedom was an idea more than it was an actuality. He had the right to bear arms, but only if the government let him. He had the right to protest, but only with a permit and in designated areas—even his freedom of speech was subject to the will of the courts. Small things like going camping, fishing or walking down the street with a beer were subject to constant government meddling. He wasn’t a right wing nutcase, he could entertain the notion that some restrictions were a necessary evil brought about by an increasingly complex society and a growing population, but that didn’t mean he liked it, or that he didn’t resent the lie. “Regulate this,” he said, hefting his rifle.

There are two months left to the deployment and the men devise all kinds of ways to quantify that: number of patrols, number of KOP rotations, number of mefloquine Mondays. It’s starting to dawn on them that they’ll probably never walk to the top of Honcho Hill again or get dropped onto the Abas Ghar. When they’re down at the KOP they use the communal laptops to try to arrange girlfriends for themselves when they get back. The men who already have girlfriends arrange to have them stock up on beer, steak, whatever they’ve been craving for the past year. The men will fly into Aviano Air Base, take a two-hour bus ride to Vicenza, turn in their weapons, and then form up on a parade ground called Hoekstra Field. As soon as they’re discharged they can do whatever they want. The drinking starts immediately and continues until unconsciousness and then resumes whenever and wherever the men wake up. They find themselves at train stations and on sidewalks and in police stations and occasionally at the medical facilities. In past years one drunken paratrooper was struck by a train and killed and another died of an overdose. They’d made it through the dangers of combat and died within sight of their barracks in Vicenza. “Y’all will only be remembered for the last thing you ever did,” Caldwell warned them one warm spring night.

She paid rapt attention to the carpet design He did the same to his pint of beer. She wished she were ten thousand miles away He just wished she were here. He smoked a rolled-up cigarette She smoked a brand that was strong, As she dreamily savoured her newly-won life, While he wondered how things had gotten so wrong. She whispered the words of an old favourite song He joined – mistaking her meaning. She shed a few reminiscent tears He carried on – wildly dreaming. He reached for her hand. She snatched it away, Brushing invisible specks from her lap Then she endeavoured to say… “I don’t understand why you keep up this farce Why can’t you see there’s no way? I cannot revive what has long since died There’s nothing more I can say.” He cried like a baby; He pleaded and begged her to stay. She hated herself like a louse But still she got up – and walked away.

Consider a world in which cause and effect are erratic. Sometimes the first precedes the second, sometimes the second the first. Or perhaps cause lies forever in the past while effect in the future, but future and past are entwined. On the terrace of the Bundesterrasse is a striking view: the river Aare below and the Bernese Alps above. A man stands there just now, absently emptying his pockets and weeping. Without reason, his friends have abandoned him. No one calls any more, no one meets him for supper or beer at the tavern, no one invites him to their home. For twenty years he has been the ideal friend to his friends, generous, interested, soft-spoken, affectionate. What could have happened? A week from this moment on the terrace, the same man begins acting the goat, insulting everyone, wearing smelly clothes, stingy with money, allowing no one to come to his apartment on Laupenstrasse. Which was cause and which effect, which future and which past? In Zürich, strict laws have recently been approved by the Council. Pistols may not be sold to the public. Banks and trading houses must be audited. All visitors, whether entering Zürich by boat on the river Limmat or by rail on the Selnau line, must be searched for contraband. The civil military is doubled. One month after the crackdown, Zürich is ripped by the worst crimes in its history. In daylight, people are murdered in the Weinplatz, paintings are stolen from the Kunsthaus, liquor is drunk in the pews of the Münsterhof. Are these criminal acts not misplaced in time? Or perhaps the new laws were action rather than reaction? A young woman sits near a fountain in the Botanischer Garten. She comes here every Sunday to smell the white double violets, the musk rose, the matted pink gillyflowers. Suddenly, her heart soars, she blushes, she paces anxiously, she becomes happy for no reason. Days later, she meets a young man and is smitten with love. Are the two events not connected? But by what bizarre connection, by what twist in time, by what reversed logic? In this acausal world, scientists are helpless. Their predictions become postdictions. Their equations become justifications, their logic, illogic. Scientists turn reckless and mutter like gamblers who cannot stop betting. Scientists are buffoons, not because they are rational but because the cosmos is irrational. Or perhaps it is not because the cosmos is irrational but because they are rational. Who can say which, in an acausal world? In this world, artists are joyous. Unpredictability is the life of their paintings, their music, their novels. They delight in events not forecasted, happenings without explanation, retrospective. Most people have learned how to live in the moment. The argument goes that if the past has uncertain effect on the present, there is no need to dwell on the past. And if the present has little effect on the future, present actions need not be weighed for their consequence. Rather, each act is an island in time, to be judged on its own. Families comfort a dying uncle not because of a likely inheritance, but because he is loved at that moment. Employees are hired not because of their résumés, but because of their good sense in interviews. Clerks trampled by their bosses fight back at each insult, with no fear for their future. It is a world of impulse. It is a world of sincerity. It is a world in which every word spoken speaks just to that moment, every glance given has only one meaning, each touch has no past or no future, each kiss is a kiss of immediacy.

And now the household took their seats, and tables were set all round the hall, and food served; dishes of meat were brought in and set before Egil and the rest. After this ale was borne in, beer of the strongest. Soon they began to drink bumpers, each man was to drink off the horn; and especial care was taken that Egil and his companions should drink hard. Egil drank without shirking a drop for a long while, but when his companions were become helpless, then he drank for them what they could not. So matters went on till the tables were removed, and by then all in the room were well drunk. But before each cup that he drank Armod said: 'I drink to you, Egil,' and the house-carles drank to Egil's companions with the same preface. A man was appointed to bear every cup to Egil's party, and he urged them to drink it off quick. Egil told his companions to drink no more, but himself drank for them what they could not avoid. Egil soon found that it would not do for him to go on so. Wherefore he stood up, went across the floor to where Armod sat, took him with his hands by the shoulders, and forced him back against the inner posts, and vomited in his face. There was an outcry and uproar, but Egil went back to his place, sate him down, and bade them serve him drink. ... Egil rose up in the morning as soon as it was day. He and his made them ready, and when ready went at once to the house to seek Armod. And when they came to the apartments where slept Armod and his wife and daughter, then Egil burst open the door and approached Armod's bed. He then drew his sword, but with the other hand grasped the beard of Armod, and forced him forward to the edge of the bed. But Armod's wife and daughter leapt up and prayed Egil not to slay Armod. Egil said he would spare him for their sakes; 'For,' said he, 'this is but meet; yet has he deserved to die.' After this Egil cut off his beard close to his chin, and put out one of his eyes.

Peter told him that for the Incas the center of the universe wasn’t a point but a line where the two halves of the universe meet. Is this the scene unfolding before Richard’s eyes at the entrance to the asylum seekers’ residence? And are the two groups of people facing off here something like the two halves of a universe that actually belong together, but whose separation is nonetheless irrevocable? Is the rift dividing them in fact a bottomless chasm; is that why such powerful turbulences have been released? And is it a rift between Black and White? Or Poor and Rich? Stranger and Friend? Or between those whose fathers have died and those whose fathers are still alive? Or those with curly hair and those with straight? Those who call their dinner fufu and those who call it stew? Or those who like to wear yellow, red, and green t-shirts and those who prefer neckties? Or those who like to drink water and those who prefer beer? Or between speakers of one language and another? How many borders exist within a single universe?

Death, like so many great movies, is sad. The young fancy themselves immune to death. And why shouldn’t they? At times life can seem endless, filled with belly laughs and butterflies, passion and joy, and good, cold beer. Of course, with age comes the solemn understanding that forever is but a word. Seasons change, love withers, the good die young. These are hard truths, painful truths—inescapable but, we are told, necessary. Winter begets spring, night ushers in the dawn, and loss sows the seeds of renewal. It is, of course, easy to say these things, just as it is easy to, say, watch a lot of television. But, easy or not, we rely on such sentiment. To do otherwise would be to jump without hope into a black and endless abyss, falling through an all-enveloping void for all eternity. Really, what’s to gain from saying that the night only grows darker and that hope lies crushed under the jackboots of the wicked? What answers do we have when we arrive at the irreducible realization that there is no salvation in life, that sooner or later, despite our best hopes and most ardent dreams, no matter how good our deeds and truest virtues, no matter how much we work toward our varied ideals of immortality, inevitably the seas will boil, evil will run roughshod over the earth, and the planet will be left a playground in ruins, fit only for cockroaches and vermin. There is a saying favored by clergymen and aging ballplayers: Pray for rain. But why pray for rain when it’s raining hot, poisoned blood?

Nevertheless, it would be prudent to remain concerned. For, like death, IT would come: Armageddon. There would be-without exaggeration-a series of catastrophes. As a consequence of the evil in man...-no mere virus, however virulent, was even a burnt match for our madness, our unconcern, our cruelty-...there would arise a race of champions, predators of humans: namely earthquakes, eruptions, tidal waves, tornados, typhoons, hurricanes, droughts-the magnificent seven. Floods, winds, fires, slides. The classical elements, only angry. Oceans would warm, the sky boil and burn, the ice cap melt, the seas rise. Rogue nations, like kids killing kids at their grammar school, would fire atomic-hydrogen-neutron bombs at one another. Smallpox would revive, or out of the African jungle would slide a virus no one understood. Though reptilian only in spirit, the disease would make us shed our skins like snakes and, naked to the nerves, we'd expire in a froth of red spit. Markets worldwide would crash as reckless cars on a speedway do, striking the wall and rebounding into one another, hurling pieces of themselves at the spectators in the stands. With money worthless-that last faith lost-the multitude would riot, race against race at first, God against God, the gots against the gimmes. Insects hardened by generations of chemicals would consume our food, weeds smother our fields, fire ants, killer bees sting us while we're fleeing into refuge water, where, thrashing we would drown, our pride a sodden wafer. Pestilence. War. Famine. A cataclysm of one kind or another-coming-making millions of migrants. Wearing out the roads. Foraging in the fields. Looting the villages. Raping boys and women. There'd be no tent cities, no Red Cross lunches, hay drops. Deserts would appear as suddenly as patches of crusty skin. Only the sun would feel their itch. Floods would sweep suddenly over all those newly arid lands as if invited by the beach. Forest fires would burn, like those in coal mines, for years, uttering smoke, making soot for speech, blackening every tree leaf ahead of their actual charring. Volcanoes would erupt in series, and mountains melt as though made of rock candy till the cities beneath them were caught inside the lava flow where they would appear to later eyes, if there were any eyes after, like peanuts in brittle. May earthquakes jelly the earth, Professor Skizzen hotly whispered. Let glaciers advance like motorboats, he bellowed, threatening a book with his fist. These convulsions would be a sign the parasites had killed their host, evils having eaten all they could; we'd hear a groan that was the going of the Holy Ghost; we'd see the last of life pissed away like beer from a carouse; we'd feel a shudder move deeply through this universe of dirt, rock, water, ice, and air, because after its long illness the earth would have finally died, its engine out of oil, its sky of light, winds unable to catch a breath, oceans only acid; we'd be witnessing a world that's come to pieces bleeding searing steam from its many wounds; we'd hear it rattling its atoms around like dice in a cup before spilling randomly out through a split in the stratosphere, night and silence its place-well-not of rest-of disappearance. My wish be willed, he thought. Then this will be done, he whispered so no God could hear him. That justice may be served, he said to the four winds that raged in the corners of his attic.

From a nutrition standpoint, the reason I don’t like the terms vegetarian and vegan is that they are only defined by what you don’t eat. When I used to speak on college campuses, I would meet vegans who appeared to be living off french fries and beer. Vegan, technically, but not exactly health promoting. That’s why I prefer the term whole-food, plant-based nutrition.

When you’re the sane brother of a schizophrenic identical twin, the tricky thing about saving yourself is the blood it leaves on your hands—the little inconvenience of the look-alike corpse at your feet. And if you’re into both survival of the fittest and being your brother’s keeper—if you’ve promised your dying mother—then say so long to sleep and hello to the middle of the night. Grab a book or a beer. Get used to Letterman’s gap-toothed smile of the absurd, or the view of the bedroom ceiling, or the indifference of random selection. Take it from a godless insomniac. Take it from the uncrazy twin—the guy who beat the biochemical rap.

Normalcy?” I ask, louder than is probably necessary, surprising myself with the unusual amount of animated expression in my voice. “A regular human being? Jesus, what the fuck is there in that? What does that even mean? Credit card debt, a mortgage, a nagging spouse and bratty kids and a minivan and a fucking family pet? A nine-to-five job that you hate, and that’ll kill you before you ever see your fabled 401k? Cocktail parties and parent-teacher conferences and suburban cul-de-sacs? Monogamous sex, and the obligatory midlife crisis? Potpourri? Wall fixtures? Christmas cards? A welcome mat and a mailbox with your name stenciled on it in fancy lettering? Shitty diapers and foreign nannies and Goodnight Moon? Cramming your face with potato chips while watching primetime television? Antidepressants and crash diets, Coach purses and Italian sunglasses? Boxed wine and light beer and mentholated cigarettes? Pediatrician visits and orthodontist bills and college funds? Book clubs, PTA meetings, labor unions, special interest groups, yoga class, the fucking neighborhood watch? Dinner table gossip and conspiracy theories? How about old age, menopause, saggy tits, and rocking chairs on the porch? Or better yet, leukemia, dementia, emphysema, adult Depends, feeding tubes, oxygen tanks, false teeth, cirrhosis, kidney failure, heart disease, osteoporosis, and dying days spent having your ass wiped by STNAs in a stuffy nursing home reeking of death and disinfectant? Is that the kind of normalcy you lust for so much? All of that—is that worth the title of regular human being? Is it, Helen? Is it?

They were born, they grew up in the gutters, they went to work at twelve, they passed through a brief blossoming-period of beauty and sexual desire, they married at twenty, they were middle-aged at thirty, they died, for the most part, at sixty. Heavy physical work, the care of home and children, petty quarrels with neighbours, films, football, beer, and above all, gambling, filled up the horizon of their minds. To keep them in control was not difficult. A few agents of the Thought Police moved always among them, spreading false rumours and marking down and eliminating the few individuals who were judged capable of becoming dangerous; but no attempt was made to indoctrinate them with the ideology of the Party.

*JESUS IN LONDON 'INASMUCH AS YE DID IT NOT—' If JESUS came to London, Came to London to-day, He would not go to the West End, He would come down our way; He'd talk with the children dancing To the organ out in the street, And say He was their big Brother And give them something to eat. He wouldn't go to the mansions Where the charitable live, He'd come to the tenement houses Where we ain't got nothing to give. He'd come so kind and so homely, And feed us with love and bread, And then He'd tell us how to behave, And then we'd mind what He said. In the warm, bright, West End churches They sing and preach and pray, They call us “Beloved brethren,” But they do not act that way; And when He come to the church door He'd call out loud and free, “You stop that preaching and praying And show what you've done for Me.” Then they'd say, “Oh, Lord, we have given To the poor both blankets and tracts, And we've tried to make them sober And we've tried to teach them facts. But they will sneak round to the drink shop And pawn the blankets for beer, And we find them very ungrateful— But still we persevere.” Then He would say, “I told you The time I was here before, That you were all of you brothers, All you that I suffered for. I won't go into your churches, I'll stop in the sun outside. You bring out the men, your brothers, The men for whom I died!” Out of our lousy lodgings, From arches and doorways about, They'd have to do as He told them, They'd have to call us out. Millions and millions and millions, Thick and crawling like flies, We should creep out to the sunshine And not be afraid of His eyes. He'd see what God's image looks like When men have dealt with the same— Wrinkled with work that is never done, Swollen and dirty with shame. He'd see on the children's foreheads The branded gutter-sign That marks the girls to be harlots, That dooms the boys to be swine. Then He'd say, “What's the good of churches When these have nowhere to sleep? And how can I hear you praying When they are cursing so deep? I gave My blood and My body That they might have bread and wine, And you have taken your share and theirs Of these good gifts of Mine!” Then some of the rich would be sorry, And all would be very scared; And they'd say, “But we never knew, Lord!” And He'd say, “You never cared!” And some would be sick and shameful Because they'd know that they knew, And the best would say, “We were wrong, Lord. Now tell us what to do!” I think He'd be sitting, likely, For someone 'ud bring Him a chair, With a common kid cuddled up on His knee And the common sun on His hair. And they'd be standing before Him, And He'd say, “You know that you knew. Why haven't you worked for your brothers The same as I worked for you? “For since you're all of you brothers, It's clear as God's blessed sun That each must work for the others, Not thousands work for one. And the ones that have lived bone-idle, If they want Me to hear them pray, Let them go and work for their livings— The only honest way! “I've got nothing new to tell you; You know what I always said. But you've built their bones into churches And stolen their wine and bread. You with My name on your foreheads, Liar, and traitor, and knave, You have lived by the death of your brothers, These whom I died to save.” I wish He would come and say it; Perhaps they'd believe it then, And work like men for their livings And let us work like men. Brothers? They don't believe it, The lie on their lips is red. They'll never believe till He comes again Or till we rise from the dead

Imagine being sentient but not alive. Seeing and even knowing, but not alive. Just looking out. Recognizing but not being alive. A person can die and still go on. Sometimes what looks out at you from a person’s eyes maybe died back in childhood. What’s dead in there still looks out. It’s not just the body looking at you with nothing in it; there’s still something in there but it died and just keeps on looking and looking; it can’t stop looking.” Another person said, “That’s what it means to die, to not be able to stop looking at whatever’s in front of you. Some darn thing placed directly there, with nothing you can do about it such as selecting anything or changing anything. You can only accept what’s put there as it is.” “How’d you like to gaze at a beer can throughout eternity? It might not be so bad. There’d be nothing to fear.

Dahmer explained how he met fourteen-year-old Konerak Sinthasomphone at the Grand Avenue Mall, just like his brother before him. He offered him a hundred bucks to come home with him and take some nude photos. He gave him the drugged drink and performed oral sex on him while he was drugged. He diluted the muriatic acid with some water and injected it into the boy’s brain after drilling two small holes in the top of his head. The victim didn’t die like the other ones, and appeared to be sleeping, so Dahmer left the apartment and went up the street to a local tavern to buy some more beer. The boy apparently woke up and tried to escape because as Dahmer returned, he saw the victim standing in the street surrounded by the police and onlookers. “I already told you how I duped the officers into believing that everything was all right. After they left, I injected another solution into his brain to render him even more helpless, but he died. I was disappointed but got busy severing the flesh from the both of them, double bagged it, and threw it in the trash. I kept both of their skulls because I wanted something to remember them by and felt it was a waste to throw everything out.” I could hear the disappointment in Dahmer’s voice as he spoke.

What a beautiful thing, to help someone die with dignity,” Hugo said. “It reminds me of that Leonardo da Vinci quote, what is it again? Something like, ‘While I thought that I was learning how to live, I have been learning how to die.’ I bet you’ve learned some pretty great lessons from it all.” Sebastian coughed and stared hard into his beer. My face glowed pink. “Yes,” I said quietly. “But I haven’t always been great at applying them to my own life.” Hugo shrugged. “Is anybody good at doing that, though? Most of us don’t ever learn our real lessons in life until it’s too late, right? I guess the important thing is that you’re trying your best.” Sadness

[After the Beer Hall Putsch in Munich 1924, Hitler is put on trial and spends 24 days in court] “I ask you: Is what we wanted high treason? “You, my Lords, will not speak the final judgment in this case; that judgment will be up to ‘History,’ the goddess of the highest court, which will speak over our graves and over yours. And when we appear before that court, I know its verdict in advance. That Court will judge us as Germans who wanted the best for their people and their fatherland, who wished to fight and to die. “You may speak your verdict of ‘guilt’ a thousand times over, but ‘History,’ the goddess of a higher truth and a higher court, will one day laughingly tear up the verdict of this court, for she declares us to be innocent!” By the time he was released from prison only ten months later, Adolf Hitler had never been more popular.

Flynn shrugged. “They deserved what happened during the Ordeal.” “Which was what, exactly?” Bryce asked. “Humiliation,” Declan said with relish. “A few weeks into our visit, King Morven—Cormac’s dad—ordered Ruhn to go see if he could retrieve the Starsword from the caves.” “Tell the whole story, Dec. Why did he order me to do that?” Ruhn growled. Dec sheepishly grinned. “Because I bragged that you could.” Ruhn cracked open another beer. “And?” “And I made fun of Cormac for not having gone to retrieve it yet.” “And?” “And I said that one Valbaran Fae warrior was better than ten from Avallen.” Bryce laughed. “So Uncle Morven sent you off to teach you a lesson?” “Yep,” Flynn said. “All three of us. We didn’t realize until we were in the mist—the caves are literally full of it—that he also sent Cormac and the asshole twins to hunt us in there.” “Starting blood feuds,” Bryce said to Declan, raising her hand for a high five. “Nice work.” Declan clapped her hand, but Ithan asked, “So your Ordeals happened then?” “Yeah,” Ruhn said, face darkening. “We all got lost in the caves. There was some … scary shit in there. Ghouls and wraiths—they were old and wicked. The six of us went from trying to kill each other to trying to stay alive. Long story short, Flynn and Dec and I wound up in these catacombs deep beneath the cave—” “Surrounded by bloodsucking spirits who were going to eat our bodies, then our souls,” Flynn added. “Or was it our souls, then our bodies?” Ruhn shook his head. “I got disarmed. So I looked in the sarcophagus in the center of the chamber where we were trapped, and … there it was. The Starsword. It was either die at the hands of those creatures or die trying to pull that sword from its sheath.” He shrugged. “Thankfully, it worked.” Declan said, “Bastards ran screaming from the cave when Ruhn drew the sword. Right to where Cormac and the twins were hunting us.” He grinned again. “The three of them had no choice but to flee back to their castle. King Morven was not happy. Especially when Ruhn returned with the Starsword and told him to go fuck himself.

Everyone shut up! I have an announcement to make.” Winter scoffs beside me, but everyone else quiets down. Except Rhett—leave it to him to make it into a fight. “This isn’t the military, bonehead. I don’t take orders from you.” Summer groans and gazes up at the ceiling. “Why are you like this?” “Should we take it outside like when we were kids, then?” I quirk a brow at my little brother. Shit disturber that he is. Rhett laughs. “No chance. You’ll kick my ass with your James Bond shit. I’m wild, not stupid.” Winter scoffs again, but just keeps drinking. I see Theo stifle a laugh behind his fist. “Take Cade with you,” Willa whispers as loudly as possible to Rhett from across the table while bouncing a baby on her lap. “A tag team situation. And I’ll watch. Or referee. Whatever you call it, I don’t care. It’s hot when he gets mad, so I’m all in on this idea.” “I’m on Uncle Beau’s team!” my nephew, Luke, announces. I point at him. “Smart, kid.” “At this rate, we’ll just be a bunch of skeletons sitting around the table by the time he makes his announcement,” Jasper says. “We’ll die never knowing what it is he meant to say because you all were planning a Royal Rumble in Bailey’s new house.” His eyes dance with amusement from across the table as he takes a swig of his shitty, cheap beer with a dog on the label. “I hate you.” Jasper grins at me, reaching to take Sloane’s hand. “Hate you too, bro.” “Listen, I’ll be the first of us to turn into a skeleton,” Harvey pitches in. “Out with it.

Norman claimed his first European Tour title in 1977, at age twenty-two, shooting a course-record 66 in the final round to win the Martini International by three. On a circuit populated by scoundrels and ruffians, he stood out from his peers with his sobering focus. “For the Aussies in the generation before Greg, it was almost a badge of honor to drink ten beers and then shoot sixty-eight the next morning,” says Mike Clayton, a fellow Australian pro and contemporary of Norman. “He took it seriously. He wasn’t out there to make friends, really. I never, ever went to dinner with him. I don’t think anyone did. He would get to the course early, put in long hours, and then disappear

Back home a momentous change was coming over the United States. There was a new President, William Howard Taft, and he took office weighing three hundred and thirty-two pounds. All over the country men began to look at themselves. They were used to drinking great quantities of beer. They customarily devoured loaves of bread and ate prodigiously of the sausage meats of poured offal that lay on the lunch counters of the saloons. The august Pierpont Morgan would routinely consume seven- and eight-course dinners. He ate breakfasts of steaks and chops, eggs, pancakes, broiled fish, rolls and butter, fresh fruit and cream. The consumption of food was a sacrament of success. A man who carried a great stomach before him was thought to be in his prime. Women went into hospitals to die of burst bladders, collapsed lungs, overtaxed hearts and meningitis of the spine. There was a heavy traffic to the spas and sulphur springs, where the purgative was valued as an inducement to appetite. America was a great farting country. All this began to change when Taft moved into the White House. His accession to the one mythic office in the American imagination weighed everyone down. His great figure immediately expressed the apotheosis of that style of man. Thereafter fashion would go the other way and only poor people would be stout.

I refuse to die that way. I’ll die as I lived, with a beer in my hand and riding a dick.

Before we had finished the third round of beers, little Johnny and I had been poisoned. Someone must have put something in his beer and mine, but not in his wife's. Imagine that. I was texting and crying with my head down, and they were kissing in love, so we didn't pay attention to who could have reached our bottles on our table. I don't remember how we got to Urgell while both of us were dying from poisoning. It was a couple of blocks away; uphill a few blocks and another few block left towards Plaza Espanya. I was blindly following the way my legs and muscle memory led me, and us, towards the store and Canale Vuo from Universitat. I cannot recall a single memory frame from Nevermind to the Urgell Store, as if I had been poisoned so badly I was literally blind and unable to see. Visual blackout. I remember the three of us, holding onto each other at every step of the way, grabbing each other's arms, squeezing a hand in pain. We must have resembled Benicio del Toro and Johnny Depp attempting to enter Circus Circus in the movie, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, under the influence of ether. Or as Hunter S. Thompson and his lawyer must have appeared in real life. Anything could have happened to us that night. His wife was as tiny and fragile as Sabrina; she was just a bit taller. Multiple times we almost fell on the ground as we stumbled through the streets, trying to find our balance as his wife tried to keep us both on our feet with limited success. Johnny's wife was between us, trying to hold both of us up and lead us where my legs were taking us. I was unsure if we would live long enough to see the next day. “Realllllly.” – as Adam would say. It was the first time I had ever met Johnny Maraudin and it was almost our last night in life. We got closer to each other one night, after less than three rounds of beers, than we were with his brother Adam, who’s only friend was Tomas, in need.

ask how much the mafia pays to carry out murders. Fríjol tells me without stopping for a moment. One thousand pesos. That is about $85. The figure seems so ludicrous that I check it out in several other interviews up in the barrios with former and active gang members. They all say the same thing. One thousand pesos to carry out a killing. The price of a human life in Juárez is just $85. To traffic drugs is no huge step to the dark side. All kinds of people over the world move narcotics and don’t feel they’ve crossed a red line. But to take a human life. That is a hard crime. I can at least comprehend assassins killing to jump from poverty to riches. But for someone to take a life for just $85—enough to eat some tacos and buy a few beers over the week—shows a terrifying degradation in society. To try to get a handle on how this has happened, I talk to social worker Sandra Ramirez at a youth center in the westside slums. Sandra grew up in the barrios and worked on assembly lines before trying to steer young people away from crime. She says the teenage sicarios are the result of systematic alienation over the last two decades. The slums were a convenient place for factory workers but got nothing from the government. As the factory jobs slumped with the economy, the slums were left to rot. One 2010 study found that a stunning 120,000 Juárez youngsters aged thirteen to twenty-four—or 45 percent of the total—were not enrolled in any education nor had any formal employment. “The government offers nothing. It can’t even compete with a thousand pesos. It is only the mafia that comes to these kids and offers them anything. They offer them money, cell phones, and guns to protect themselves. You think these kids are going to refuse? They have nothing to lose. They only see the day-to-day. They know they could die and they say so. But they don’t care. Because they have lived this way all their lives.” ask how much the mafia pays to carry out murders. Fríjol tells me without stopping for a moment. One thousand pesos. That is about $85. The figure seems so ludicrous that I check it out in several other interviews up in the barrios with former and active gang members. They all say the same thing. One thousand pesos to carry out a killing. The price of a human life in Juárez is just $85. To traffic drugs is no huge step to the dark side. All kinds of people over the world move narcotics and don’t feel they’ve crossed a red line. But to take a human life. That is a hard crime. I can at least comprehend assassins killing to jump from poverty to riches. But for someone to take a life for just $85—enough to eat some tacos and buy a few beers over the week—shows a terrifying degradation in society. To try to get a handle on how this has happened, I talk to social worker Sandra Ramirez at a youth center in the westside slums. Sandra grew up in the barrios and worked on assembly lines before trying to steer young people away from crime. She says the teenage sicarios are the result of systematic alienation over the last two decades. The slums were a convenient place for factory workers but got nothing from the government. As the factory jobs slumped with the economy, the slums were left to rot. One 2010 study found that a stunning 120,000 Juárez youngsters aged thirteen to twenty-four—or 45 percent of the total—were not enrolled in any education nor had any formal employment. “The government offers nothing. It can’t even compete with a thousand pesos. It is only the mafia that comes to these kids and offers them anything. They offer them money, cell phones, and guns to protect themselves. You think these kids are going to refuse? They have nothing to lose. They only see the day-to-day. They know they could die and they say so. But they don’t care. Because they have lived this way all their lives.

I ask how much the mafia pays to carry out murders. Fríjol tells me without stopping for a moment. One thousand pesos. That is about $85. The figure seems so ludicrous that I check it out in several other interviews up in the barrios with former and active gang members. They all say the same thing. One thousand pesos to carry out a killing. The price of a human life in Juárez is just $85. To traffic drugs is no huge step to the dark side. All kinds of people over the world move narcotics and don’t feel they’ve crossed a red line. But to take a human life. That is a hard crime. I can at least comprehend assassins killing to jump from poverty to riches. But for someone to take a life for just $85—enough to eat some tacos and buy a few beers over the week—shows a terrifying degradation in society. To try to get a handle on how this has happened, I talk to social worker Sandra Ramirez at a youth center in the westside slums. Sandra grew up in the barrios and worked on assembly lines before trying to steer young people away from crime. She says the teenage sicarios are the result of systematic alienation over the last two decades. The slums were a convenient place for factory workers but got nothing from the government. As the factory jobs slumped with the economy, the slums were left to rot. One 2010 study found that a stunning 120,000 Juárez youngsters aged thirteen to twenty-four—or 45 percent of the total—were not enrolled in any education nor had any formal employment. “The government offers nothing. It can’t even compete with a thousand pesos. It is only the mafia that comes to these kids and offers them anything. They offer them money, cell phones, and guns to protect themselves. You think these kids are going to refuse? They have nothing to lose. They only see the day-to-day. They know they could die and they say so. But they don’t care. Because they have lived this way all their lives.

Licorice tattoo turned a gun metal blue Scrawled across the shoulders of a dying town Took the one eyed-jacks across the railroad tracks And the scar on its belly pulled a stranger passing through He's a juvenile delinquent, never learned how to behave But the cops would never think to look in Burma-Shave And the road was like a ribbon and the moon was like a bone He didn't seem to be like any guy she'd ever known He kind of looked like Farley Granger with his hair slicked back She says, I'm a sucker for a fella in a cowboy hat How far are you going? Said depends on what you mean He says I'm only stopping here to get some gasoline I guess I'm going thataway just as long as it's paved And I guess you'd say I'm on my way to Burma Shave And with her knees up on the glove compartment She took out her barrettes and her hair spilled out like root beer And she popped her gum and arched her back Hell, Marysville ain't nothing but a wide spot in the road Some nights my heart pounds like thunder Don't know why it don't explode 'Cause everyone in this stinking town's got one foot in the grave And I'd rather take my chances out in Burma Shave Presley's what I go by, why don't you change the stations? Count the grain elevators in the rearview mirror She said mister, anywhere you point this thing It got to beat the hell out of the sting Of going to bed with every dream that dies here every mornin' And so drill me a hole with a barber pole And I'm jumping my parole just like a fugitive tonight Why don't you have another swig and pass that car if you're so brave I wanna get there before the sun comes up in Burma Shave And the spiderweb crack and the mustang screamed The smoke from the tires and the twisted machine Just a nickel's worth of dreams and every wishbone that they saved Lie swindled from them on the way to Burma Shave And the sun hit the derrick and cast a batwing shadow Up against the car door on the shotgun side And when they pulled her from the wreck You know she still had on her shades They say that dreams are growing wild Just this side Of Burma Shave

I still don't know to this day how she managed to climb the 94 stairs; she was dying from an overdose. The gate at the bottom of the stairwell did not make a sound when she entered the building, being so ill and alone. It was odd. Where could she have been? Almost as if she had been dropped off at my doorstep like a package silently by a (Polish) giant. She was pale and could barely open the door with her keys. When she entered, she fell into my arms; she was drunk and high, her legs buckling so that she couldn't stand. I tried to figure out what she had taken and what she had drunk, but she could barely talk; her eyes were rolling back in her skull. She was crying with her head in the toilet bowl, unable to stop the cramps running through her insides and her entire body shaking. - What did you drink? - Two … beers. - I am not your father. What did you take? Where have you been? - Beers and tequila - she mumbled, saliva drooling out of her mouth and her head hanging down like she was dead already. Then I asked her what else she had taken. She still wouldn't answer, so I repeated. - Answer me Martina, who gave it to you?! - I shouted. - Where have you been?! But she didn't answer, and her condition was critical, so I had to rush her to the hospital in my arms as she was about to lose consciousness. I had to grab her and take her to the closest hospital across Parallel, two blocks away. This was the first time I had taken her to the hospital since she'd split her chin by falling off my bicycle allegedly before, although it wasn't the last. Interestingly, whenever she got involved with a new group of criminals, she wound up in the hospital both times, and both times I took her there. She had no energy to lift her head out of the toilet bowl. As soon as I entered the hospital with her, the staff and I had to put her in a wheelchair. They took her inside and 20 minutes later when I was sitting by her bed, she already felt better with an IV dripping slowly into her vein, but she was unable to move; she was lying in her hospital bed, barely able to open her eyes to look at me. She was between life and death, or between real life and just a dream. I remembered less than a year earlier she was so full of life and happy and healthy when I put her up on that set of chairs that night when we took off the 'for sale' sign. The doctors told me after she fell asleep that they wanted to rinse her stomach, but she didn't authorize that. I was not fully aware that she was on drugs time to time or all the time and with what kind of people she was associated with. She almost only showed up at home in September 2014 when she overdosed. I was in love and worried for her so much, so I filled out the forms while they treated her in the hospital. I prayed to God to save her, asking for Him to show her the Truth. All I had was a prayer—50/50 if it worked. And I remembered that two years before, I had prayed for the life of our kitten Sabrina was playing with, making friends. This time, however, I had to rush to the hospital, not the vet, with my 20-year-old girlfriend who would soon be 21 in October 2014. And I felt like Sabrina, trying to make friends again but by the wrong people was the reason why I, an atheist, was praying for a puppy or a kitten or a bunny's life this time again. I didn't know that lies and secrets were eating away at her from deep inside once in a while as well, it wasn't just the drugs that were killing her insides like cancer. Just like her brother's intestines silently began to consume him and her, unbeknownst to them, but I could almost sense it like a dog if I could not see it, smell it inside them like X-ray. They were unaware of what my eyes had seen, as I watched their vibrations and faces silently change.