Pawn Shop Quotes

Can you buy an entire chess set in a pawn shop?

Humanity i love you because you would rather black the boots of success than enquire whose soul dangles from his watch-chain which would be embarrassing for both parties and because you unflinchingly applaud all songs containing the words country home and mother when sung at the old howard Humanity i love you because when you're hard up you pawn your intelligence to buy a drink and when you're flush pride keeps you from the pawn shops and because you are continually committing nuisances but more especially in your own house Humanity i love you because you are perpetually putting the secret of life in your pants and forgetting it's there and sitting down on it and because you are forever making poems in the lap of death Humanity i hate you

I’m Rick Harrison, and this is my pawn shop. I work here with my old man and my son, Big Hoss. Everything in here has a story and a price. One thing I’ve learned after 21 years – you never know WHAT is gonna come through that door.

Pawn Shop Blues" Well, I didn't know it would come to this But that's what happens when you're on your own And you're alright letting nice things go Well, I pawned the earrings that you gave me Gold and made of flowers dangling And I almost cried as I sold them all I don't mind living on bread and oranges, no no But I gotta get to and from where I come And it's gonna take money to go Oh no, oh oh, oh oh... In the name of higher consciousness I let the best man I knew go 'Cause it's nice to love and be loved But it's better to know all you can know I said it's nice to love and be loved But I'd rather know what God knows Oh no, oh no, oh no... I can do this once more No man can keep me together Been broken since I was born Well, I didn't know it would come to this But that's what happens when you're on your own And you're alright letting nice things go

...It's probably polite to pretend you don't see people coming out of pawnshops, anyhow.

My soul is like a pawn shop. I mean it's filled with unredeemed pleasures, old clarinets, and cameras, and motheaten fur.

To a blind man, pawn shop and porn shop are one. To an unintelligent man, oversleeping and sleeping over are opposites.

Because in [Lenin's] eyes the workers were only workers and not also customers, he believed they were already slaves under capitalism, and that one did not change their status when nationalizing all plants and shops. Socialism substitutes the sovereignty of a dictator, or committee of dictators, for the sovereignty of the consumers. Along with the economic sovereignty of the citizens disappears also their political sovereignty. To the unique production plan that annuls any planning on the part of the consumers corresponds in the constitutional sphere the one party principle that deprives the citizens of any opportunity to plan the course of public affairs. Freedom is indivisible. He who has not the faculty to choose among various brands of canned food or soap, is also deprived of the power to choose between various political parties and programs and to elect the officeholders. He is no longer a man; he becomes a pawn in the hands of the supreme social engineer. Even his freedom to rear progeny will be taken away by eugenics.

The only pawn shop in the town of Night Vale is run by the very young Jackie Fierro. It has no name, but if you need it, you will know where it is. This knowledge will come suddenly, often while you are in the shower. You will collapse, surrounded by a bright glowing blackness, and you will find yourself on your hands and knees, the warm water running over you, and you will know where the pawn shop is. You will smell must, and soap, and feel a stab of panic about how alone you are. It will be like most showers you’ve taken.

When you got right down to the bottom of the ladder, the rungs were very close together and, oh my, weren’t the women careful about them. In their own way, they were as haughty as any duchess. You might not have much, but you could have Standards. Clothes might be cheap and old, but at least they could be scrubbed. There might be nothing behind the front door worth stealing but at least the doorstep could be clean enough to eat your dinner off, if you could’ve afforded dinner. And no one ever bought their clothes from the pawn shop. You’d hit bottom when you did that. No, you bought them from Mr. Sun at the shonky shop, and you never asked where he got them from.

Foreign kings and pawn shops place no value on sentiment. According to God’s standards, children should be among mother-Judah’s highest priorities. Public schools seldom notice, or care, when her children are bullied. Babylon sees Israelite youth as a commodity. But, who set that pattern? Revisit verse three, where “instrumental usage” was introduced by mother-Judah. pg 16

The items on the counter in the shop had been pawned by a man who had used an American driving licence as his ID, issued in the state of New Mexico in the name Jack Bauer. He had received 16,430 kronor in total. “Is this some sort of fucking joke?” Jacob asked. “How the hell can someone get away with calling himself Jack Bauer? Jack Bauer! The TV show? Twenty-four?

I felt the same way about my son until I realized that he couldn't get to school or work or a therapy appointment but he could get to pawn shops, get to his dealers, get whatever drug he wanted, get alcohol, break into houses, get needles — whatever was required. It's a fairly sophisticated process to cook a batch of methamphetamine, but I felt so sorry for him, thinking, He's depressed. He's fragile. He's incapable. Of course I should pay his bill if he winds up in the hospital. Of course I should pay his rent or he'll be on the streets. So for about a year I paid for a comfortable place for him to get high.

He was struck by the order, dullness, dumbness, suicidal tendencies, and pointlessness of midcentury America, the America of the empire, the America that was going to put its stamp on a century, the America with its arteries clogged with things, and its soul left at some pawn shop along the way in order to raise the cash for guns.

Wait, what? Mara roughed up some guys?” For a moment Harrison wondered if this had something to do with a woman at her shelter. Maybe she’d been at that pawn shop to try and talk to an ex or something. But that didn’t make sense. Mara would have told him about that. “That’s a mild way of putting it. She also took a bunch of pistols.

There are now skin products supposedly created with 24-karat gold extract. I guess if financial times got really tough, you could always pawn your own head.

Ella's supersonic voice followed her all the way to Bleecker Street and then dissolved amid the noisy profusion of shops, cafes, and restaurants and the crush of people that made the West Village of Manhattan unique in the world. In a single block you could buy fertility statues from Tanzania, rare Amazonian orchids, a pawned brass tuba, Krispy Kreme doughnuts, or the best, most expensive cup of coffee you ever tasted. It was the doughnuts, incidentally, that attracted Gaia.

Treating the cause of high prices and interest rates in low-income neighborhoods as the product of personal greed or exploitation, and attempting to remedy the problem through the imposition of price controls and interest rate caps. , it only ensures that people living in low-income neighborhoods have even less chance of accessing these services in the future. Just as rent control reduces the supply of housing, price and interest rate control can reduce the number of stores, pawn shops, local finance companies, and check-paying agencies willing to operate in costly neighborhoods. higher, when those costs cannot be recovered through legally permitted prices and interest rates. The only alternative for many residents of low-income neighborhoods may end up being to exit the legal market of financial institutions and ask for money from usurious lenders, who set even higher interest rates and have their own collection methods.

I have no idea where it is. I just hop a ride when you do your disappearing thing.” “You can trail our siphons?” Jude asks, interested. “You call it a siphon? Then yeah; I can trail that. I just have to be close enough when you do it.” He moves toward me. “Then hold on. We can just ask someone who might know what’s going on.” My fingers go to his body without hesitation, and Kai snaps at him not to do it just as we disappear. The wind whirs in my ears much louder than before, and we appear in the back of an alleyway. “We’re seeing your pawn shop friend, aren’t we?” I ask him. He doesn’t even bother asking me how I know that. “Yes,” is his only reply as the other three join us. Kai stalks forward. “Until we figure out what’s going on, we can’t risk our very important friends by exposing them to a possible threat.” Jude ignores him, leading the way, and Ezekiel trails me as we walk out of the alley. I move through the wall of the pawn shop, causing Ezekiel to curse. “She’s going to draw attention. It’s not late enough for this,

So he strode, and ran, and hurried home. He emptied into the ever-useful pocket-handkerchief the little meal remaining in the mug. Mary would have her tea at Miss Simmonds’; her food for the day was safe. Then he went upstairs for his better coat, and his one, gay red-and-yellow silk pocket-handkerchief — his jewels, his plate, his valuables, these were. He went to the pawn-shop; he pawned them for five shillings; he stopped not, nor stayed, till he was once more in London Road, within five minutes’ walk of Berry Street — then he loitered in his gait, in order to discover the shops he wanted. He bought meat, and a loaf of bread, candles, chips, and from a little retail yard he purchased a couple of hundredweights of coal. Some money still remained — all destined for them, but he did not yet know how best to spend it. Food, light, and warmth, he had instantly seen were necessary; for luxuries he would wait. Wilson’s eyes filled with tears when he saw Barton enter with his purchases. He understood it all, and longed to be once more in work that he might help in some of these material ways, without feeling that he was using his son’s money.

The brilliant sunshine lay like a golden shawl over the rich mountain city that morning my train set me down for the first time in my life in young Denver. The names of strange railroads incited me from the sides of locomotives at the depot. As I passed up 17th Street a babble of voices from the doors of clothing stores, auction houses and pawn broker shops coaxed and flattered me with 'Sir' and 'Young Gentleman'. There was something in the streets I walked that morning, in the costly dress of the ladies in passing carriages, in the very air that swept down from the mountains, something lavish, dashing and sparkling, like Lutie Brewton herself, and I thought I began to understand a little of her fever for this prodigal place that was growing by leaps and bounds.

There was major u.s. imperialist support for Italian, Spanish and German fascism before and even during World War II, as opposed to support for fascism at home. Fascism was distinct from racism or white supremacy, which were only "as American as apple pie." Neither the ruling class nor the white masses had any real need for fascism. What for? There was no class deadlock paralyzing society. There already was a longstanding, thinly disguised settler dictatorship over the colonial proletariat in North America. In the u.s. settlerism made fascism unnecessary. However good or bad the economic situation was, white settlers were getting the best of what was available. Which was why both the white Left and white Far Right alike back then in the 1930s were patriotic and pro-American. Now only the white Left is. The white Left here is behind in understanding fascism. When they're not using the word loosely and rhetorically to mean any repression at all (like the frequent assertions that cutting welfare is "fascism"! I mean, give us a break!), they're still reciting their favorite formula that the fascists are only the "pawns of the ruling class". No, that was Nazism in Germany, maybe, though even there that's not a useful way of looking at it. But definitely not here, not in that old way. The main problem hasn't been fascism in the old sense – it's been neocolonialism and bourgeois democracy! The bourgeoisie didn't need any fascism at all to put Leonard Peltier away in maximum security for life or Mumia on death row. They hunted down the Black Panthers and the American Indian Movement like it was deer hunting season, while white America went shopping at the mall – all without needing fascism. And the steady waterfall of patriarchal violence against women, of rapes and torture and killings and very effective terrorism on a mass scale, should remind us that the multitude of reactionary men have "equal opportunity" under "democracy", too.

Any word from our lads keeping an eye on the jewellery and pawn shops?’ ‘Nope – though there are rumours Franks misheard the instruction and ended up in a porno shop.’ ‘Wouldn’t surprise me, the dirty sod. Good rumour – let’s keep telling people that. What else is going on?

Reacher opened the pawn shop door. He stepped inside. A guy at the register looked up. He was a big bear of a man, scruffy and unkempt. Maybe in his middle thirties, dark, with plenty of fat over a big frame anyway. With some kind of cunning in his eyes. Certainly enough to perfect his response to his sudden six-five two-fifty visitor. Driven purely by instinct. The guy wasn’t afraid. He had a loaded gun under the counter. Unless he was an idiot. Which he didn’t look. All the same, the guy didn’t want to risk sounding aggressive. But he didn’t want to sound obsequious, either. A matter of pride.

from around the precious plants. The fresh air was exhilarating and John’s aunt chatted merrily about times gone by and what Italy had been like when she and John’s mother were children. ‘But that was before the war,’ she sighed. ‘It is far behind us.’ As Mary Anne pulled Mathilda’s blanket a little higher around the cherry-pink face, a thought occurred to her. ‘I think I have something that used to belong to your sister – perhaps to you too.’ ‘Oh?’ Maria eyed her quizzically. ‘Yes,’ said Mary Anne, and went on to tell her about the time John had come to borrow money against a silver crucifix that she’d guessed had belonged to his mother. ‘He’d wanted the money for Daw’s engagement and wedding ring. I gave him the money but never sold the cross on. I couldn’t do it somehow. I kept thinking that one day he might want it back.’ ‘You have this?’ said Maria, her eyes shining. ‘You remember it?’ Maria clapped her hands together. ‘Of course I do!’ ‘Michael found it in the ruins of the pawn shop. I still have it.’ She turned and looked with gratitude into Maria’s dark eyes. ‘You’ve been so kind to me. You must have it back.’ Maria’s eyes brimmed with tears. ‘It is a pleasure. I cannot thank you enough.’ They sat on a park bench. Mathilda was sitting up, observing everything with unusual interest. ‘She’s a lovely child,’ said Maria. Mary Anne murmured a reply. Her eyes were elsewhere, her attention caught by a man in a trench coat walking along the path at the side of the bowling green. She fancied he had been staring at them. 19 Lizzie and the wing commander had been travelling between airfields, ‘co-ordinating events’ as Hunter liked to call it, when he’d spotted a dog fight in the distance. Streaks of white vapour trail criss-crossed the sky as the Messerschmitt and the Spitfire locked horns above the English countryside. In their midst was a low-flying bomber, the bone of contention between the two. Hunter got out a pair of binoculars. Lizzie shaded her eyes with her hand. ‘They’re chasing the bomber.’ ‘Correction,’ Hunter said slowly. ‘The Spitfire is chasing the

I remember a phrase I had heard from him years ago, about how all of us lost souls allow ourselves to live in worry and anger and self-importance and pettiness when lie with God is all around us: Your time is already in the pawn shop of lost souls.

*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

intent was honest, he really did want to help and he did have a lot of knowledge about antiques since he’d been running his family pawn shop for almost a decade. She knew they could trust him and she filed the information away for later in case they got desperate for money.

Instead of finishing the sentence she slid a business card across the counter. It listed her contact information for every social media site I'd heard of, and several that were still in beta. Except for Google Plus. Even Internet-addicted fairies have standards.

Her eyes flashed up at him, then back down at the box. She opened it eagerly. Inside lay the cameo necklace he had seen the new housemaid pawn at a shop in Weavering Street. “You bought it back for me,” she breathed, eyes shining. “You have no idea what this means—it was a gift from my father.” He nodded. “There is more.” She looked inside the box again. Under the cameo lay a piece of thick paper. She extracted it and handed him the box to hold. She turned the paper over, revealing the small watercolor of Lime Tree Lodge. Her brow puckered. “Thank you, but you might have kept it. I wouldn’t have minded.” He tucked his chin as though offended, and insisted, “I spent a great deal of money on it.” “On this?” She raised her fair brows, incredulous. “Not on the painting. On Lime Tree Lodge itself.” She stared at him, stunned. “You didn’t . . .” “I did.” “But . . . my solicitor told me some vicar was very keen on buying it.” “He was. But I was keener.” “How did you . . . Forgive me, but I know you needed every shilling for Fairbourne Hall and to repair your ship.” “True.” “Then, how?” “I sold my ship. The damage did not lower its value as much as I had feared, and it brought a good price. Besides, I have no need of it any longer.

AM: My father had arrived in New York all alone, from the middle of Poland, before his seventh birthday… He arrived in New York, his parents were too busy to pick him up at Castle Garden and sent his next eldest brother Abe, going on 10, to find him, get him through immigration and bring him home to Stanton Street and the tenement where in two rooms the eight of them lived and worked, sewing the great long, many-buttoned cloaks that were the fashion then. They sent him to school for about six months, figuring he had enough. He never learned how to spell, he never learned how to figure. Then he went right back into the shop. By the time he was 12 he was employing two other boys to sew sleeves on coats alongside him in some basement workshop. KM: He went on the road when he was about 16 I think… selling clothes at a wholesale level. AM: He ended up being the support of the entire family because he started the business in 1921 or something. The Miltex Coat Company, which turned out to be one of the largest manufacturers in this country. See we lived in Manhattan then, on 110th Street facing the Park. It was beautiful apartment up on the sixth floor. KM: We had a chauffeur driven car. The family was wealthy. AM: It was the twenties and I remember our mother and father going to a show every weekend. And coming back Sunday morning and she would be playing the sheet music of the musicals. JM: It was an arranged marriage. But a woman of her ability to be married off to a man who couldn’t read or write… I think Gussie taught him how to read and to sign his name. AM: She knew she was being wasted, I think. But she respected him a lot. And that made up for a little. Until he really crashed, economically. And then she got angry with him. First the chauffeur was let go, then the summer bungalow was discarded, the last of her jewellery had to be pawned or sold. And then another step down - the move to Brooklyn. Not just in the case of my father but every boy I knew. I used to pal around with half a dozen guys and all their fathers were simply blown out of the water. I could not avoid awareness of my mother’s anger at this waning of his powers. A certain sneering contempt for him that filtered through her voice. RM: So how did the way you saw your father change when he lost his money? AM: Terrible… pity for him. Because so much of his authority sprang from the fact that he was a very successful businessman. And he always knew what he as doing. And suddenly: nothin’. He didn’t know where he was. It was absolutely not his fault, it was the Great Crash of the ‘29, ‘30, ‘31 period. So from that I always, I think, contracted the idea that we’re very deeply immersed in political and economic life of the country, of the world. And that these forces end up in the bedroom and they end up in the father and son and father and daughter arrangements. In Death of a Salesman what I was interested in there was what his world and what his life had left him with. What that had done to him? Y’know a guy can’t make a living, he loses his dignity. He loses his male force. And so you tend to make up for it by telling him he's OK anyway. Or else you turn your back on him and leave. All of which helps create integrated plays, incidentally. Where you begin to look: well, its a personality here but what part is being played by impersonal forces?

Finding the good stuff can be done by exploiting survivor bias. As someone informed me, the good stuff is whatever costs more than $100 in a pawn shop or an antique store.

Wow!" gasped Wren. "Is that the box that Jax was talking about before?" Trevor nodded numbly. He couldn't speak. His mouth had gone completely dry. He had dreamed of this box numerous times throughout the years. He loved puzzles. He'd solved his first Rubik's cube when he was only three. Thousand-piece, three dimensional puzzles were a fun way to pass an afternoon. But this puzzle box that his grandfather had discovered on some mysterious trip and had guarded fiercely had remained the pinnacle of his puzzle questing mind. Vaguely, through the buzzing in his ears, Trevor heard Wren open the letter and start reading. To my grandson Trevor, I give you this puzzle box that I discovered in a pawn shop of rather questionable purposes. Please read the journal I have included very closely so that you will understand how to guard this extremely dangerous artifact. The journal, the amulet, and the gargoyle I have included are all that protect you and the rest of the world from the Evil contained within this box. Remember all that I taught you and never forget that, "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." George Santayana said that, and it is as true today as it was the first time you opened the box. I pray that you have grown wiser in the years since. Wren ran his hands through the Styrofoam peanuts in the box. "Uhhh, Trev, there's no journal here." "What?" Trevor snapped out of his trance and watched as his friend started seriously digging through the box looking for the journal mentioned in the letter. "I can't find anything but Styrofoam peanuts in this box, and this sheet of paper was all that was in the envelope.

the typical economic support system for an American military town. That means pawn shops, secondhand car dealers, pawn shops, secondhand furniture dealers, secondhand clothing stores, pawn shops, gun stores, all-you-can-eat cafeterias, and, oh God, how could I forget, mobile homes and prefab home sales. Then you

Sean Sagan, the main character in my novel, The Last Breath of Sean Sagan came to life while wintering in the Bahamas. Sean walked the beach trail to my rented cabin. He guided me through the writing process.

[Humanity i love you]" Humanity i love you because you would rather black the boots of success than enquire whose soul dangles from his watch-chain which would be embarassing for both parties and because you unflinchingly applaud all songs containing the words country home and mother when sung at the old howard Humanity i love you because when you’re hard up you pawn your intelligence to buy a drink and when you’re flush pride keeps you from the pawn shop and because you are continually committing nuisances but more especially in your own house Humanity i love you because you are perpetually putting the secret of life in your pants and forgetting it’s there and sitting down on it and because you are forever making poems in the lap f death Humanity i hate you E.E. Cummings, first published as “La Guerre II” in XLI Poems (The Dial Press, 1925)

He swam past the prawn broker shop which sold used fish

They managed to scope out the whole of the block by staying back in the pawn shop, back in the shadows, traversing side to side, peering out at oblique angles. There were two guys on the sidewalk outside the taxi office door, and two guys some distance away on the left-hand street corner, and two guys the same distance away on the right. Six men visible. Plus probably the same again inside. At least. Maybe two in the hallway the pawnbroker had described, plus two in the conference room, plus two at the mouth of the corridor that led onward to the offices. Each of which was no doubt occupied by a made man with a gun in his pocket and a spare in a drawer

I came to ask her directions to a seller of human sweets. And also an establishment called a pawn shop.

Notwithstanding this, the present publishers have the best of reasons for believing, that there are thousands of persons whom the book has never reached.

Today, while we do have positive economic growth for some, there are many economic failure indicators in my country. They include people sleeping in the cold squalor of abandoned houses. Drugs, liquor stores, pawn shops, and payday lending stores have become a growth industry in the west, while productive industry is shuttered or moved to lower wage countries. The growth industry today is in “economic extraction”, while real economic production is having a difficult time. “Financialization” seems to be the name of the game, and “economic extraction” is what that means, rather than economic production. Why build factories and produce goods if quicker money can be made by stripping companies instead. General Electric, Boeing, 3M, Sears, Toys R us, and so many others serve as examples of company stripping. Perhaps country stripping.

It ain't my idea to leave before dawn. My ole lady decided to visit Nana, that's why the house stinks of hairspray. You know why she's leaving early: so nobody sees her scurry through town on foot. All she wants is for them to see her arrived, all hunky-dory. Not scurrying. It's a learning I made since the car went. 'Well I just can't believe there isn't a pair of Tumbledowns around town, I mean, I'll have to try down by Nana's.' She gives off breathy noises, and flicks her fingertips through my hair. Then she takes a step back and frowns. It means goodbye. 'Promise me you won't miss your therapy.' An electric purple sky spills stars behind the pumpjack, calling home the last moths for the night. It reminds me of the morning when ole Mrs Lechuga was out here, all devastated. I try not to think about it. Instead I look ahead to today. Going to Keeter's is a smart idea; if anybody sees me out there, they'll say, 'We saw Vernon out by Keeter's,' and nobody will know if they mean the auto shop, or the piece of land. See? Vernon Gray-matter Little. In return, I've asked Fate to help me solve the cash thing. It's become clear that cash is the only way to deal with problems in life. I even scraped up a few things to pawn in town, if it comes to that. I know it'll come to that, so I have them with me in my pack – my clarinet, my skateboard, and fourteen music discs. They're in the pack with my lunchbox, which contains my sandwich, the two joints, and a piece of paper with some internet addresses on it. As for the joints and the piece of paper, I heard the voice of Jesus last night. He advised me to get wasted, fast. If at first you don't succeed, he said, get wasted off your fucken ass. My plan is to sit out at Keeter's and get some new ideas, ideas borne out of the bravery of wastedness. I ride down empty roads of frosted silver, trees overhead swish cool hints of warm panties in bedclothes. Liberty Drive is naked, save for droppings of hay, and Bar-B-Chew Barn wrappers. In this light you can't see the stains on the sidewalk by the school. As the gym building passes by, all hulky and black, I look the other way, and think of other things. Music's a crazy thing, when you think about it. Interesting how I decided which discs not to pawn. I could've kept some party music, but that would've just tried to boost me up, all this thin kind of 'Tss-tss-tss,' music. You get all boosted up, convinced you're going to win in life, then the song's over and you discover you fucken lost. That's why you end up playing those songs over and over, in case you didn't know. Cream pie, boy. I could've kept back some heavy metal too, but that's likely to drive me to fucken suicide. What I need is some Eminem, some angry poetry, but you can't buy that stuff in Martirio. Like it was an animal sex doll or something, you can't buy angry poetry. When you say gangsta around here, they still think of Bonnie & fucken Clyde. Nah, guess what: I ended up keeping my ole Country albums. Waylon Jennings, Willie Nelson, Johnny Paycheck – even my daddy's ole Hank Williams compilation. I kept them because those boys have seen some shit – hell, all they sing about is the shit they've seen; you just know they woke up plenty of times on a wooden floor somewhere, with ninety flavors of trouble riding on their ass. The slide-guitar understands your trouble. Then all you need is the beer.