Guff Quotes

Juno MacGuff: Nah... I mean, I'm already pregnant, so what other kind of shenanigans could I get into?

Juno MacGuff: I don't know what kind of girl I am.

Bren MacGuff: Well, honey, doctors are sadists who like to play God and watch lesser people scream...

Juno MacGuff: I was out handling things way beyond my maturity level.

Juno MacGuff: "Thanks a heap coyote ugly. This cactus-gram stings worse than your abandonment.

Juno MacGuff: Wise move. I know this girl who had a huge crazy freakout because she took too many behavioral meds at once. She took off all her clothes and jumped into the fountain at Ridgedale Mall and she was like, "Blaaaaah! I'm a kraken from the sea!" Su-Chin: That was you.

Juno MacGuff: [yelling through the house] Dad? Mac MacGuff: What? Juno MacGuff: Either I just peed my pants or um... Mac MacGuff: *Or*...? Juno MacGuff: THUNDERCATS ARE GO!

Juno MacGuff: You can never have too many of your favorite one calorie breath mints.

It's guff. It doesn't advance the action. It makes for nice fat books such as the American market thrives on, but it doesn't actually get you anywhere.

Don't take any guff from these swine.

Who would appreciate such candor? No one. None of us really likes honesty. We prefer deception –but only when it is unabashedly flattering or artfully camouflaged. Groups seem to need to believe that they are superior to others and that they have a purpose greater than just passing along their genes to the next generation. Individuals seem to need similar delusions – about who they are and why they do what they do. They need heroes, however fraudulent… Studies show that people are more likely to accept the opinion of a confident con man than the cautious view of someone who actually knows what he is talking about. And professionals who form overconfident opinions on the basis of incorrect readings of the facts are more likely to succeed than their more competent peers who display greater doubt. What’s more, deception works best, according to studies by psychologists, when the person doing the deceiving is fool enough to be deceived, too; that is, when he believes his own lies. That is why incompetent leaders – who are naïve enough to fall for their own guff – are such a danger to civilized life. If they are modern leaders, they must also delude themselves into thinking they know how to make the world a better place. Invariably, the answers they propose to problems are ones that bubble up from their own vanity, the essence of which is to make the rest of the world look just like them!

Sir Alric is big on self-motivation, initiative, that kind of guff.

If James Earl Jones yodeled into the universe’s vagina, Guff’s voice is the noise that would echo back.

With: Go Ferchios off to Allad out of this! An oldsteinsong. He threwed his fit up to his aers, rolled his poligone eyes, snivelled from his snose and blew the guff out of his hornypipe.

I never realize how much I like being home unless I've been somewhere really different for a while.

To any woman out there who is fed up with trying the same thing over and over, I offer this suggestion. Instead of getting back on the treadmill “one more time,” try this. Alter your diet so that you eat no grain-based carbohydrate: no flour, no sugar, no bread, no pasta, and no high-fructose corn syrup. Then go to the gym and perform a workout of leg press, pull down, chest press, row and overhead press. Lift slowly and smoothly but with as much effort as possible. Go to complete fatigue, or as close to it as you can tolerate. Work out once, or at most, twice a week. Make sure your workouts last no longer than 20 minutes. Then sit back and watch what happens. —Doug McGuff, MD

Oh God how subtle he would have to be, how cunning... No paragraph, no phrase even of the thousands the book must contain could strike a discordant note, be less than fully imagined, an entire novel's worth of thought would have to be expended on each one. His attention had only to lapse for a moment, between preposition and object, colophon and chapter heading, for dead spots to appear like gangrene that would rot the whole. Silkworms didn't work as finely or as patiently as he must, and yet boldness was all, the large stroke, the end contained in and prophesied by the beginning, the stains of his clouds infinitely various but all signifying sunrise. Unity in diversity, all that guff. An enormous weariness flew over him. The trouble with drink, he had long known, wasn't that it started up these large things but that it belittled the awful difficulties of their execution. ("Novelty")

The average person weighing 150 pounds burns roughly 100 calories per mile—whether the person walks or runs that mile.

but I am so nauseated by Christian and Theosophical guff about the ‘good and the true’ that I prefer the appearance of evil to that of good.

I suppose you have a perfectly good reason for destroying my sign?” Jericho appeared beside me. “I had to paint the bloody thing myself,” he said pissily. “There’s not a sign-maker left in the city. I have better things to do than paint.” I gaped. Jericho Barrons was standing beside me. Inside my head. I shook it, half expecting him to be knocked off his feet and go rattling around. He remained standing, urbane and implacable as ever. “This isn’t possible,” I told him. “You can’t be here. This is my head.” “You push into mine. I merely projected an image with the push this time, to give you something to look at.” He gave me a faint smile. “Wasn’t easy getting in. You give a whole new meaning to ‘rock head.’” I laughed. I couldn’t help it. He invaded my thoughts and gave me guff even here. “I found you standing in the street, staring at the sign over the bookstore. Tried talking to you but you didn’t respond. Thought I’d better take a look around. What are you doing, Mac?” he said softly—Barrons at his most alert and dangerous. My laughter died and tears sprang to my eyes. He was in my head. I saw little point in hiding anything. He could take a good look around and see the truth for himself. “I didn’t get the spell.” My voice broke. I’d failed him. I hated myself for that. He’d never failed me. “I know.” My gaze flicked to his face, bewildered. “You . . . know?” “I knew it was a lie the moment you said it.” I searched his eyes. “But you looked happy! You smiled. I saw things in your eyes!” “I was happy. I knew why you’d lied.” His dark gaze was ancient, inhuman, and uncharacteristically gentle. Because you love me.

if one desires to have the body type of, say, a champion swimmer, the best course is to start by having the same parents as that champion swimmer—rather than his or her training methods.

While both low- and high-intensity physical activity burn calories, high-intensity exercise does something that is highly important in the fat-burning process that its lower-intensity counterpart does not: it activates hormone-sensitive lipase.

Fact is, a commercial aeroplane is one of the most restrictive enviornments in the world. Want to know the difference between a commercial aeroplane and communist China? You can smoke, guff and make consensual love in communist China without fear of reproach!

You should ask him where his crew is.” Doolittle’s face wrinkled in disgust. “Go on. Tell her.” Jim didn’t look like he wanted to tell me anything. “Where is Brenna?” “On the roof, keeping a lookout,” Jim said. “And the rest?” Come to think of it, I hadn’t seen any of them since we came out of Unicorn. “Apparently there is a band of loups near Augusta.” Doolittle leveled an outraged glare at Jim. “I’ve been listening to it on the radio. The city’s on the verge of panic. Odd loups these. Mellow. Although they apparently performed shocking acts of animal mutilation within plain view of the farmhouse, the farmer’s family slept through the whole thing. Curiously, no humans were harmed.” I almost laughed. No loup would attack livestock if human prey was available. They craved human flesh. “They’re creating a diversion,” Jim said. Raphael halted his conversation with Andrea to emit a short, distinctly hyena guff. “That’s the best plan you could come up with?” “Apparently he thinks that Curran’s a moron.” Doolittle shook his head.

From what I’d written in “The Improper Princess” and from the history I’d given in Talking to Dragons, I already knew the general outline of her adventures, which, again, required someone smart, practical, and sure of herself. Explaining this occasionally confounds people who think that I wrote Cimorene as some sort of feminist statement about what women can achieve. I find their surprise hard to understand. My real-life family and friends are full of women like Cimorene, from my twin cousins, who have been fur trappers in the Alaskan bush for most of their lives, to my mother, who became an engineer long before women’s liberation officially opened “nontraditional careers” to women, to my grandmothers, aunts, and cousins, who were office managers, farmers, nurses, nuns, geologists, and bookkeepers, among other things. None of these women takes any guff from anyone. They aren’t proving a point about what women could, should, or can do; they are ignoring that whole question (which none of them considers a question worth asking at all) and getting on with doing the things that interest them most.

Ever since Parsons had been a boy, however, the dark side of magic had captivated him. "I know that witchcraft is mostly nonsense, except where it is a blind," he wrote to Crowley in 1943, "but I am so nauseated by Christian and Theosophical guff about the 'good and the true' that I prefer the appearance of evil to that of good.

Moral hazard refers to the fact that people take on greater risks when they are personally shielded from the negative consequences.

On June 6, 2005, CNN reported on the startling (to some) findings of a McMaster University research group, proclaiming that “six minutes of pure, hard exercise once a week could be just as effective as an hour of daily moderate activity.

Tell ’em that, and use your blind, immoral, misguided, nigger-lovin’ daughter as your example. Go in front of me with a bell and say, ‘Unclean!’ Point me out as your mistake. Point me out: Jean Louise Finch, who was exposed to all kinds of guff from the white trash she went to school with, but she might never have gone to school for all the influence it had on her. Everything that was Gospel to her she got at home from her father. You sowed the seeds in me, Atticus, and now it’s coming home to you—

But what Nev does is he takes these kids’ anger and channels it. He gives them someone to hate. He gives their rage some structure and provides them with real targets rather than nebulous ones. So they end up believing they’re committing theft, assault and vandalism for a good cause. Isn’t that what terrorism is basically all about, anyway? Add a few olde worlde patriotic values, a lot of guff about the ‘true English homeland’ and a bit of green to the mix and it makes them feel like downright responsible and virtuous citizens, the only ones who really care about their country.

Their cook at Badenoch was a crotchety old lady who hadn't tried a new recipe in decades. "Dinna tell Mrs. MacGuff that or she'll put a spider in your tea." "Try it and tell me 'tis not worth the risk." He tore off a corner of the bridie and lifted the bite to Katherine's lips. It fairly melted on her tongue. In addition to the crusty pasty, a unique mix of spices seasoned the savory meat inside, a burst of sensations for her mouth. "Och, you're right. This is worth braving a spider. I'll get Cook to show me how she makes these, and then Mrs. MacGuff will either learn from me or she'll have to suffer my presence in her kitchen from time to time. And we know how she loves that!" "So," he said smugly, his dark eyes alight with triumph, "ye do intend to come home with me after Christmas, then.

It was the biggest joint summoning that I’d been involved in since the great days of Prague. Forty djinn materializing more or less at once, in a vast chamber built for that purpose in the bowels of Whitehall. As with all such things, it was a messy business, despite the best efforts of the magicians. They were all lined up in tidy rows of identical pentacles, wearing the same dark suits and speaking their incantations quietly, while the officiating clerks scribbled their names down at tables to the sides. We djinn, of course, were less concerned with regimental decorum: we arrived in forty very different guises, trumpeting our individuality with horns, tails, iridescent flanges, spikes, and tentacles; with colors ranging from obsidian-black to delicate dandelion-yellow; with a menagerie full of hollerings and chitter; with a magnificent range of sulfurous guffs and stenches.

controlling insulin levels adequately such that serum insulin levels remain low. In this way, hormone-sensitive lipase is easier to activate, making mobilized bodyfat the body’s primary energy source preferentially over other sources. This state can be achieved through a diet that is relatively restricted in carbohydrates, but one will have more dietary latitude if, in concert with going easy on the carbohydrates, one engages in the performance of high-intensity exercise.

She was not on the porch. In later years, I sometimes wondered exactly what made Jem do it, what made him break the bonds of “You just be a gentleman, son,” and the phase of self-conscious rectitude he had recently entered. Jem had probably stood as much guff about Atticus lawing for niggers as had I, and I took it for granted that he kept his temper—he had a naturally tranquil disposition and a slow fuse. At the time, however, I thought the only explanation for what he did was that for a few minutes he simply went mad. What Jem did was something I’d do as a matter of course had I not been under Atticus’s interdict, which I assumed included not fighting horrible old ladies. We had just come to her gate when Jem snatched my baton and ran flailing wildly up the steps into Mrs. Dubose’s front yard, forgetting everything Atticus had said, forgetting that she packed a pistol under her shawls, forgetting that if Mrs. Dubose missed, her girl Jessie probably wouldn’t. He did not begin to calm down until he had cut the tops off every camellia bush Mrs. Dubose owned, until the ground was littered with green buds and leaves. He bent my baton against his knee, snapped it in two and threw it down. By that time I was shrieking. Jem yanked my hair, said he didn’t care, he’d do it again if he got a chance, and if I didn’t shut up he’d pull every hair out of my head. I didn’t shut up and he kicked me. I lost my balance and fell on my face. Jem picked me up roughly but looked like he was sorry. There was nothing to say.

You're a taffy-puller." "I'm a what?" "A taffy-puller. They hypnotize me. Didn't you ever see one? " I don't think so," she breathed. " But - " " You see them on the boardwalk. Beautifully machined little rigs, all chrome-plated eccentrics and cams. There are two cranks set near each other so that the 'handle' of each passes the axle of the other. They stick a big mass of taffy on one `handle' and start the machine. Before that sticky, homogeneous mass has a chance to droop and drip off, the other crank has swung up and taken most of it. As the crank handles move away from each other the taffy is pulled out, and then as they move together again it loops and sags; and at the last possible moment the loop is shoved together. The taffy welds itself and is pulled apart again." Robin's eyes were shining and his voice was rapt. "Underneath the taffy is a stainless steel tray. There isn't a speck of taffy on it, not a drop, not a smidgen. You stand there, and you look at it, and you wait for that lump of guff to slap itself all over those roller bearings and burnished cam rods, but it never does. You wait for it to get tired of thar fantastic juggling, and it never does. Sometimes gooey little bubbles get in the taffy and get carried around and squashed flat, and when they break they do it slowly, leaving little soft craters that take a long time to fill up; and they're being mauled around the way the bubbles were." He sighed. "There's almost too much contrast - that competent, beautiful machinist's dream handling - what? Taffy - no definition, no boundaries, no predictable tensile strength. I feel somehow as if there ought to be an intermediate stage somewhere. I'd feel better if the machine handled one of Dali's limp watches, and the watch handled the mud. But that doesn't matter. How I feel, I mean. The taffy gets pulled. You're a taffy-puller. You've never done a wasteful or incompetent thing in your life, no matter what you were working with.

many people who happen to possess such abnormal physical capabilities frequently misidentify themselves as sources of authority, taking credit for something that nature has, in essence, randomly dropped in their laps.

I’m hoping he comes back with a broken arm.” Oren packed a pinch of tobacco into the bowl of the pipe with his thumb. “Then I won’t have to be the one to break it when he finally gets up enough nerve to touch Lily.” “Oren!” Lily scolded through a smile. Good thing Oren didn’t know Connell already had touched her—even if it had only been brief. “I see the way that man’s been looking at you,” Oren mumbled, adding another layer of tobacco. “Even a blind man could see that he can’t keep his eyes off you.” Her inexperienced heart flushed with pleasure at Oren’s words. “Connell McCormick’s a good boy.” Vera wiped her arm across her forehead, brushing her frazzled hair into greater disarray. “I haven’t met too many boys as good as Connell.” Lily had to agree. She’d never known a man like Connell—someone so thoughtful and considerate. “All I have to say is he’s lucky I haven’t poked out his eyeballs yet for all the liberty he’s takin’ looking at Lily.” “He’s attracted to her,” Vera retorted, never afraid to give Oren the guff he deserved. “You can’t blame the boy. Lily’s probably the prettiest girl he’s ever laid eyes on.” “Well, ’course she is.” Oren packed a last layer into his pipe.

Pardee cut in peevishly. “All’s you can do is talk of them old days. I’m sick and tired of your guff. I was a damn’ fool to take this job with you—” “It

your muscles deal only with force-production requirements, which, in turn, are determined by the resistance to which the muscles are exposed—whether that resistance comes in the form of a free weight, a Nautilus machine, or a bucket of rocks. The scientific literature backs this up: according to the few properly performed studies that measured the effects of free weights versus machines, both are equally effective.1

The literature came down overwhelmingly in favor of a single set of exercise as being sufficient; only two out of the forty-seven studies surveyed showed any benefit (and a marginal improvement at that) to be had from the performance of multiple sets.3

The bottom line is that a single set taken to a point of positive failure is a sufficient stimulus to trigger the growth and strength mechanism of the body into motion. Additional sets produce nothing but more time spent in the gym.

It is more important to know what sort of person has a disease than to know the sort of disease a person has.

Economics, when you strip away the guff and the mathematical sophistry, is largely about incentives.

There are many conservative African Americans. Men and women who support Republican policies; men and women who despise the Democrats, who feel they’ve been taken advantage of for decades. Others who think the Democrats are “just as racist” as the Republicans—some even more so—but are still, somehow, the best option. What am I gonna do, they wonder, become a Republican? It’s a hidden conversation among people within the black community. They may agree with Republican policies when talking to someone face-to-face. But they don’t dare share those feelings outside the room, and they definitely don’t go out and say it on Fox News. (I’ll probably get some guff for even putting it in this book.) The same people who agree with me in private conversations will fight me tooth and nail on social media because they cannot allow conversations conducted within the community to get into the public sphere. We don’t want “the others” to know. So we keep our beliefs close to the vest and support those who pretend to be our allies (e.g., the Clintons). It’s the cost of doing business.

Damn. I think you’re right. Without help, it’s needle-in-a-haystack time. Thanks for handling that for me. And let me know what the school says. If they give you any guff, let me know. I’ve still got friends in the administration. They’ll talk if we need them to. What about Jane Macias? What’s happening there?” Lincoln

She said the only true thing I’ve ever heard anyone say about their mom dying. We were . . . I don’t know, it’s weird. I think we were laughing about something. We were trying to joke about it, because that’s what nobody else ever does, right? And then she looked up at me, and said, ‘That bitch just keeps on dying.’” Leo laughed, a low, sardonic guff of it. “Mine, too. Fucking bitches.” Saina

Mr Mingin minged. He monged tae. And if it is guid Scots tae say he mingit, then he mingit as weel. He wis the mingiest mingin minger that ever lived. Mingin is the warst kind o smell. Mingin is warse than honkin. Honkin is warse than bowfin. Bowfin is warse than a guff. And a guff can sometimes be enough tae mak yer neb curl up and dee. It wisnae Mr Mingin’s faut he wis mingin. Efter aw, he wis a tink. He didnae hae a hame sae he never had the chaunce tae hae a richt guid waash like you and me. Efter a while, the guff jist got warse and warse. Here is a pictur o Mr Mingin.

She nodded. "Yes. I talked to Chief Thurmond. He couldn't tell me much but he said he might have much more for me later, and that they were still investigating." "They'll be investigating in the year two thousand if I know the cops in this town. I could stick the local Boy Scout chapter in the station and get more done. I wonder why the hell they gave out this bunch of guff.

Bobby Flay taught me the secret trick to shucking at a party at Bruce and Eric Bromberg's house out in East Hampton. They're all huge now, Bruce and Eric with Blue Ribbon et al. and Bobby with Mesa Grill et al., new cookbooks, and a television show. They put me to work at the enormous four-sided grill they'd set up in the backyard next to the roasting pit where a cuchinillo (young suckling pig) was being basted on a spit, turning darker shades of pink. I had no idea who Bobby was at the time, and the two of us were working side by side, flipping peppers and onions, zucchinis, squash, swordfish steaks, and New York strips. Fresh out of the Cordon Bleu, I thought I was pretty hot shit, ordering Bobby around like a redheaded stepchild. He was very nice about it. Took my guff and told the other grill cooks to listen to the chef. It was the best cooking time I ever had, feeling like I was one of the guys. When I found out who Bobby Flay was, I was mortified. And then I thought, Wow, he was so cool. He never once pulled rank or made me feel like I didn't know what I was doing. He let me be in control. I guess that's what happens when you're the real McCoy. You don't need to piss on other people to make yourself feel better.

But when Guff looks my way, he defo snubs me. Oh no, he’s turning his back and pressing the volume up on the system. ‘Shame on a Nigga’ by Wu Tang btw, classic old school. I decide to sit down somewhere abso obvious, beside the fire, hoping that if Guff makes eye contact again I can do that Wu Tang W sign with both hands, so he knows I’m down with Shaolin.

I don’t believe in love at first sight or soul mates or any of that guff you see in the movies. You know, where you meet someone in an impossibly coincidental way and you lock eyes and true, everlasting love ensues.

The problem is not that people today are inactive; the problem is that calories are so readily available to be consumed. Diners judge the value of their meals by the size of the portions they are given, and when people go out to eat, they want to leave feeling full. On this point, studies have shown that there is a difference of roughly 1,000 calories between feeling satisfied and feeling full. Moving on, there is a difference of 2,000 to 3,000 calories between feeling full and feeling stuffed. If you go out to an all-you-can-eat buffet and leave feeling stuffed, you may have consumed as many as 4,000 unneeded calories.

The adage that “practice makes perfect” has merit, but it should be amended to include “only when perfectly practiced.

Pardee cut in peevishly. “All’s you can do is talk of them old days. I’m sick and tired of your guff. I was a damn’ fool to take this job with you—

And if a giant new government agency—perhaps called “Housicare”—were given the power to tax all paychecks in order to pay for all home purchases and apartment rentals (according to an official schedule of prices corresponding to family size and job location), the disruption in the market would be mind-boggling. By severing the direct connection between buyer and seller, consumers’ satisfaction with their homes and apartments would suffer while prices would soar. After a few years of such a nutty system, the housing market would be just as screwed up as … well, as the health care and health insurance markets currently are.

Wayne Wescott took nonambulatory seniors from a nursing home and had them participate in a brief workout involving one set of six different exercises for a fourteen-week period. The average age of the subjects was eighty-eight and a half. At the end of the study, the seniors had averaged a four-pound gain in muscle, a three-pound loss of fat, an increase in strength of more than 80 percent in their lower-body musculature, and an increase in strength of almost 40 percent in their upper-body musculature. They improved their hip and shoulder flexibility by an average of 50 percent and 10 percent, respectively. More important, at the end of the study, many of the formerly wheelchair-bound subjects were able to walk again. They were out of their wheelchairs and no longer required around-the-clock nursing.16

Yes, health care is a crucial component of a person’s lifestyle, and that might make Americans hesitant to rely on “the free market” to deliver it. But food, clothing, and shelter are even more fundamental staples of life, and most Americans would agree that having the government act as a “single payer” for all of their purchases at the grocery store and The Gap would be an absolute disaster.

The sign in the pan, stuck to the honey, was no handsome stranger, no trip, no money, but a bone-chilling warning of danger ahead, the frightening footprint of a great giant’s tread. “Bigpaw!” breathed Mama. “Good grief and alas! The Thanksgiving Legend is coming to pass!” “Legend?” asked Sister. “What legend is that?” “It says when the Bears of Bear Country grow greedy and fat, and fail to share Nature’s great bounty, that monster of monsters, Bigpaw, will come and gobble up Bear Country county by county!” “Nonsense!” mocked Papa. “Nonsense and stuff! Nonsensical piffle! Pure Bear Country guff!” But Papa Bear couldn’t have been more wrong. The Thanksgiving Legend was coming on strong.

You mean,' went on Wimsey, 'that they think in clichés.' 'Eh?' ‘Formulae. “There's nothing like a mother's instinct” “Dogs and children always know.” “Kind hearts are more than coronets." “Suffering refines the character”—that sort of guff, despite all evidence to the contrary.

. . . chaotic irregularity is what defines the body's adaptive capabilities.

I drove to the bar Theodosha had called from and parked on the street. The bar was a gray, dismal place, ensconced like a broken matchbox under a dying oak tree, its only indication of gaiety a neon beer sign that flickered in one window. She was at a table in back, the glow of the jukebox lighting her face and the deep blackness of her hair. She tipped a collins glass to her mouth, her eyes locked on mine. “Let me take you home,” I said. “No, thanks,” she replied. “Getting swacked?” “Merchie and I had another fight. He says he can’t take my pretensions anymore. I love the word ‘pretensions.’” “That doesn’t mean you have to get drunk,” I said. “You’re right. I can get drunk for any reason I choose,” she replied, and took another hit from the glass. Then she added incongruously, “You once asked Merchie what he was doing in Afghanistan. The answer is he wasn’t in Afghanistan. He was in one of those other God-forsaken Stone Age countries to the north, helping build American airbases to protect American oil interests. Merchie says they’re going to make a fortune. All for the red, white, and blue.” “Who is they?” But her eyes were empty now, her concentration and anger temporarily spent. I glanced at the surroundings, the dour men sitting at the bar, a black woman sleeping with her head on a table, a parolee putting moves on a twenty-year-old junkie and mother of two children who was waiting for her connection. These were the people we cycled in and out of the system for decades, without beneficial influence or purpose of any kind that was detectable. “Let’s clear up one thing. Your old man came looking for trouble at the club today. I didn’t start it,” I said. “Go to a meeting, Dave. You’re a drag,” she said. “Give your guff to Merchie,” I said, and got up to leave. “I would. Except he’s probably banging his newest flop in the hay. And the saddest thing is I can’t blame him.” “I think I’m going to ease on out of this. Take care of yourself, kiddo,” I said. “Fuck that ‘kiddo’ stuff. I loved you and you were too stupid to know it.” I walked back outside into a misting rain and the clean smell of the night. I walked past a house where people were fighting behind the shades. I heard doors slamming, the sound of either a car backfiring or gunshots on another street, a siren wailing in the distance. On the corner I saw an expensive automobile pull to the curb and a black kid emerge from the darkness, wearing a skintight bandanna on his head. The driver of the car, a white man, exchanged money for something in the black kid’s hand. Welcome to the twenty-first century, I thought. I opened my truck door, then noticed the sag on the frame and glanced at the right rear tire. It was totally flat, the steel rim buried deep in the folds of collapsed rubber. I dropped the tailgate, pulled the jack and lug wrench out of the toolbox that was arc-welded to the bed of the truck, and fitted the jack under the frame. Just as I had pumped the flat tire clear of the puddle it rested in, I heard footsteps crunch on the gravel behind me. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a short, thick billy club whip through the air. Just before it exploded across the side of my head, my eyes seemed to close like a camera lens on a haystack that smelled of damp-rot and unwashed hair and old shoes. I was sure as I slipped into unconsciousness that I was inside an ephemeral dream from which I would soon awake.

Economics, when you strip away the guff and mathematical sophistry, is largely about incentives.