Slag Quotes

The essence of capitalism is to turn nature into commodities and commodities into capital. The live green earth is transformed into dead gold bricks, with luxury items for the few and toxic slag heaps for the many. The glittering mansion overlooks a vast sprawl of shanty towns, wherein a desperate, demoralized humanity is kept in line with drugs, television, and armed force.

Man vill bli älskad, i brist därpå beundrad, i brist därpå fruktad, i brist därpå avskydd och föraktad. Man vill ingiva människorna något slags känsla. Själen ryser för tomrummet och vill kontakt till vad pris som helst.

With a sigh, she asked, “Why do you care if I believe you or not?” “Because if you think I got a leg over with that slag, then the chance of anything sexual with you will be drastically reduced.” Without looking up, she said, “Cadeon, a chance can’t be reduced from zero.” “Gods, I love it when you talk mathy to me.

Cadeon, can you hear me?" He didn't open his eyes. "Nothing wrong with my ears." "Of course not." She laid the cloth on his forehead. "So . . you and Tera seemed close." "Been through a lot." "Was she your girlfriend?" He gave a laugh that sounded like a grunt. "Not at all." "And you really didn't sleep with Imatra?" "Bloody hell, noooo, I didn't . . . She's a slag." "Then why did you kiss her?" Holly asked. "Directions. . . and to see." "To see what?" "That it wouldn't be all that bad without you." This was interesting. "Did you make a determination?" He gave a bitter laugh. "It'll be all that bad." Oh, Cadeon. "You've known I was your female for a year?" He nodded. "Why I would be chosen for you?" "Fate decides . . . who I can be most satisfied with." Nibbling her lip, she asked, "Have you slept with anyone else since you knew it was me?" "Gave a halfhearted try for a witch . . . she wanted a werewolf instead." There was no getting around it--Holly was jealous of the witch. But then Cadeon said, "And I wanted you.

Look at me!’ I screeched. ‘Look at me, Amadeus von Linden, you sadistic hypocrite, and watch this time! You’re not questioning me now, this isn’t your work, I’m not an enemy agent spewing wireless code! I’m just a minging Scots slag screaming insults at your daughter! So enjoy yourself and watch! Think of Isolde! Think of Isolde and watch!

So, in the first round, we have an expandable duck versus a useless metal cylinder. Our contestants are running very close indeed." ... "Judging has been difficult. We have weighed the merits of Junior's boiling sludge, slag heap and useless metal cylinder against the chain-mail waistcoat, bulletproof tie and Expando-Duck. It was a close call.

Being slagged off is good for you. It thickens the skin and strengthens the backbone.

Als kind had je dat vaak. Je werd 's morgens wakker en de muren van je kamer stonden verkeerd om je heen. In gedachten moest je de kamer een slag draaien zodat alles weer klopte en je op kon staan, de deur door, de dag in.

Two things that when you put them together in a poem make the reader feel whatever emotion you want them to so you don’t have to expressly name it. As in, if you write slag heap it saves you the job of typing morbid existential despair.

The Greeks believe the Fates are three sisters: one is Order, who spins out the linear thread of a life from the beginning; another is Irony, who gently cocks up the thread, marking it with some peculiar sense of balance, like justice, only blind drunk with a scale that’s been bunged into the street so it never quite settles; and the third, Inevitability, simply sits in the corner taking notes and criticizing the other two for being shameless slags until she cuts life’s thread, leaving everyone miffed at the timing.

City of Wizards is normally quite a GOOD thing, since only Good WIZARDS seem able to live together. . . .There have been cities of EVIL Wizards in the past. You will occasionally come across the sites of these, reduced to a glassy slag during the ultimate disagreement.

So this kid is what? A predestined Alexander? A Caesar? A Genghis? A Wiggin?” I ask. “This is slagging nonsense.

Huh? Oh you have a hidden agenda, do you?" She laughed. His straight-faced humor always surprised her. "You promised me you didn't." "There is nothing hidden about it," he replied. My objective is obvious. I've decided I'd rather have you describe me as 'sweet' than a 'slagging pain in the tailset.'" "Really?" "Well..." he looked up from the bag. "Maybe not in public." "I might be able to confine myself to saying it in private, if you gave me a reason." Taya met his eyes, and he blushed.

Well, I was going to tell you about a dream I had about dragons. They were purple and pretty and liked to sing songs." She flicks my armor with a finger. It rings. "Way to upstage me, Jerk. What happened?" "I got mad." She groans, I've become the maiden in distress, haven't I? Slag! I hate those girls.

Det finnes skydd mot nästan allt som är mot eld och skador genom storm och köld ja, räkna upp vad slag som tänkas kan. Men det finns inget skydd mot människan.

In God's economy, nothing is slag, nothing is wasted. Every relationship we build is a teacher, every experience we have is a coach. In every scar there is a lesson. In every memory there lives potential to make more.

Maybe you'll come to know that every man in every generation is refired. Does a craftsman, even in his old age, lose his hunger to make a perfect cup--thin, strong, translucent?" He held his cup to the light. " All impurities burned out and ready for a glorious flux, and for that-- more fire. And then either the slag heap or, perhaps what no one in the world ever quite gives up, perfection." He drained his cup and he said loudly, "Cal, listen to me. Can you think that whatever made us-- would stop trying?

Als iemand iets moois ziet, denkt hij dat het af is. Dat stelt hem tevreden. Hij kijkt niet verder. Hij gaat er niet mee aan de slag. Hij durft er niet aan te slijpen, zodat wij nooit zullen weten wat er allemaal nog onder de oppervlakte zit. Die hele onzichtbare rijkdom zal nooit worden aangeboord.

The train bore me away, through the monstrous scenery of slag-heaps, chimneys, piled scrap-iron, foul canals, paths of cindery mud criss-crossed by the prints of clogs. This was March, but the weather had been horribly cold and everywhere there were mounds of blackened snow. As we moved slowly through the outskirts of the town we passed row after row of little grey slum houses running at right angles to the embankment. At the back of one of the houses a young woman was kneeling on the stones, poking a stick up the leaden waste-pipe which ran from the sink inside and which I suppose was blocked. I had time to see everything about her—her sacking apron, her clumsy clogs, her arms reddened by the cold. She looked up as the train passed, and I was almost near enough to catch her eye. She had a round pale face, the usual exhausted face of the slum girl who is twenty-five and looks forty, thanks to miscarriages and drudgery; and it wore, for the second in which I saw it, the most desolate, hopeless expression I have ever-seen. It struck me then that we are mistaken when we say that ‘It isn’t the same for them as it would be for us,’ and that people bred in the slums can imagine nothing but the slums. For what I saw in her face was not the ignorant suffering of an animal. She knew well enough what was happening to her—understood as well as I did how dreadful a destiny it was to be kneeling there in the bitter cold, on the slimy stones of a slum backyard, poking a stick up a foul drain-pipe.

I’ve always believed it’s important to accept the people in your life for what they are. There’s no such thing as a perfect friend, any more than there’s any such thing as a perfect anything, and if you slag everyone in your life for their many and varied failings, you’re going to miss appreciating the good stuff they bring to the table.

In this broad earth of ours, Amid the measureless grossness and the slag, Enclosed and safe within its central heart, Nestles the seed perfection.

With him big Phil from Notting Hill an old "face" from the sixties a pin up gangster with a "mars bar" weal scraping his left cheek and of course two "wag" slags in tow trussed up like French Poodles with "Bratz babe" stares and Gucci Handbags

Men and women are hard ore, we do not go to slag in a mere few seasons of forge.

leafless trees stand atop slag heaps like skeleton hands shoved up from the underworld.

Poetry was the processing of my thoughts until the slag of justification fell away and I was left with the cold steel truths of life.

TO: rosencrantzpinchard@gmail.com Oh god! Oh god! Oh shit! I have just sent the email I was meant to send to you, slagging off Meryl to Meryl by mistake. Damn this email invention.

Av medelklass finns fyra slag. 1) med bildning och piano, 2) med bildning men utan piano, 3) utan bildning men med piano, 4) utan både bildning och piano. Familjen i Nite tillhörde grupp fyra.

That’s right. People. It’s all people. People and their stupid fucking groups. Show me an individual decision maker whose decisions have harmed me, and I’ll melt his stack to slag. Show me a group with the united purpose of harming me and I’ll take them all down if I can. But don’t expect me to waste time and effort on abstract hate.

Du skjønner, det er så mye som ikke for plass om sommeren og høsten og våren", sa hun. "Alle som er litt sjenerte og litt rare. Forskjellige slags nattdyr og folk som ikke passer inn noen steder, og som ingen tror på. De holder seg unna hele året. Og så, når det er helt stille og hvitt og nettene blir lange og alle har gått i hi - da kommer de fram.

Lees je Céline?' vroeg een vrouwenstem. Haar stem klonk tamelijk sexy. Ik had me al een tijd eenzaam gevoeld. Tientallen jaren eigenlijk.[...] 'Nou, aan de slag. Ik wil Frankrijks grootste schrijver. Ik wacht al heel lang.

Side by side with the human race there runs another race of beings, the inhuman ones, the race of artists who, goaded by unknown impulses, take the lifeless mass of humanity and by the fever and ferment with which they imbue it turn this soggy dough into bread and the bread into wine and the wine into song. Out of the dead compost and the inert slag they breed a song that contaminates. I see this other race of individuals ransacking the universe, turning everything upside down, their feet always moving in blood and tears, their hands always empty, always clutching and grasping for the beyond, for the god out of reach: slaying everything within reach in order to quiet the monster that gnaws at their vitals. I see that when they tear their hair with the effort to comprehend, to seize this forever unattainable, I see that when they bellow like crazed beasts and rip and gore, I see that this is right, that there is no other path to pursue. A man who belongs to this race must stand up on the high place with gibberish in his mouth and rip out his entrails. It is right and just, because he must! And anything that falls short of this frightening spectacle, anything less shuddering, less terrifying, less mad, less intoxicated, less contaminating, is not art. The rest is counterfeit. The rest is human. The rest belongs to life and lifelessness.

I hear you laughing, and yes you are taller than me, better looking than me, you are fitter than me, your body rippling with muscle, you are also 30 years my junior, but its still gonna hurt like hell when I kick you in the balls.

You're drunk." "That's right I am. I'm fifty-three and I'm as wild as a Welshman with a leek up his arse. Fifty-three. Old slag Gail. What right has she to poke her nose into your shining armour? That's what you're thinking isn't it honey?

...& she, armed with both & abandoning the joys of reason that had meant so much to her as well as me, made a suitably advantageous marriage with an ironmonger with a face like an anvil & a soul like a slag, & so I never saw her freckles fade, her auburn hair dull, never had to watch our love turn to that non-colour, white.

The rivers that sprang from Hvergelmir streamed into the void. The yeasty venom in them thickened and congealed like slag, and the rivers turned into ice.

Vi är allesammans fördömda", sa hon, "men somliga av oss har tagit av oss ögonbindlarna och sett att inget finns att se. Det är en slags frälsning.

Så han kommer aldrig att få veta hur mycket jag älskar honom - inte för att han är vacker, Nelly, utan för att han är mera jag än jag själv är. Vad våra själar än är gjorda av så är de av samma slag, och Lintons själ liknar dem lika lite som en månstråle liknar blixten och frosten liknar elden.

I believe that the reason there are millions of planets is the same reason there are millions of eggs. To allow for failure. There must be countless experimental stations like this one. The only thing that is not expendable is the experiment itself. Our notions of our own uniqueness are precisely that. Our notions. We will not be missed. When we have slaughtered and poisoned everything in sight and finally incinerated the earth itself then that black and lifeless lump of slag will simply revolve in the void forever. There is a place for it too. A nameless cinder of no consequence even to god. That man can halt this disaster now seems so remote a possibility as to hardly bear consideration.

Though it affected only one family, he believed the ordeal would be of interest to all; already he excelled at inflating a small issue into a larger one, of salvaging radiant principle from a slag heap of detail.

The tears had burned off most of the fear. What was left was an ugly slag of anger. That was the next level in this geological column of knowledge. But anger wasn’t the right word. He was enraged. He was infuriated.

We sat there smiling at each other, shimmied to a standstill, thinking about all the boys that had wanted us that day, and how none of them had got us, not for a minute; how we'd let them pay for drinks and candyfloss and then run away laughing, their cries of 'Slags!' and 'Bitches' ringing in our ears like respect rather than derision.

What was a strong marriage? What was a good marriage? She knew terrible people who had wonderful marriages, glued together somehow in their terribleness. And she knew fine, fine people who’d stood before God and all their friends to profess their undying love to each other only to toss that love on a slag heap a few years later. In the end, no matter how good they were—or thought they were—usually all that remained of the love they’d so publicly professed was vitriol, regret, and a kind of awed dismay at how dark the roads they’d ventured down became by the end.

Decision's made?" Sicarius called over the pumping pistons of the engine. "They're closing on us quickly." "My grandmother on a bicycle could close on us quickly," Maldynado said. "This slag heap was probably the first model ever made.

Blame confers an awesome power. And it's simplifying, not only to onlookers and victims but to culprits most of all. It imposes order on slag. Blame conveys clear lessons in which others may take comfort: if only she hadn't -- , and by implication makes tragedy avoidable. There may even be a fragile peace to be found in the assumption of total responsibility...

In Oakland, he saw two slum children sword fighting on a slag heap. In Palo Alto, a puffy fop in bursting jodhpurs shouted from the door of a luxurious stable, "My horse is soiled!" While one chilly evening in Union Square he listened to a wild-eyed young woman declaim that she had seen delicate grandmothers raped by Kiwanis zombies, that she had seen Rotarian blackguards bludgeoning Easter bunnies in a coal cellar, that she had seen Irving Berlin buying an Orange Julius in Queens.

As regards structure, comedy has come a long way since Shakespeare, who in his festive conclusions could pair off any old shit and any old fudge-brained slag (see Claudio and Hero in Much Ado) and get away with it. But the final kiss no longer symbolizes anything and well-oiled nuptials have ceased to be a plausible image of desire. That kiss is now the beginning of the comic action, not the end that promises another beginning from which the audience is prepared to exclude itself. All right? We have got into the habit of going further and further beyond the happy-ever-more promise: relationships in decay, aftermaths, but with everyone being told a thing or two about themselves, busy learning from their mistakes. So, in the following phase, with the obstructive elements out of the way (DeForest, Gloria) and the consummation in sight, the comic action would have been due to end, happily. But who is going to believe that any more?

Olive Wellwood told no stories about Goldthorpe, or the Gullfoss mine. She had packed away the slag-heaps and winding-gear, the little house in Morton Row, with its dark uninhabited parlour, its animated kitchen and pocket-sized garden, the ever-present stink of the ash pits across the yards, and the grime that floated onto the strips of lace curtain. She had packed it away in what she saw in her mind as a roped parcel, in oiled silk, with red wax seals on the knots, which a woman like and unlike herself carried perpetually over a windswept moor, sometimes on her head, sometimes held before her on two arms, like the cushion on which the regalia lie at coronations. This vision was not a story. The woman never arrived, and the parcel was never opened. The weather was grey and the air was turbulent. When Olive Wellwood found her mind heading in that direction, she was able to move imaginary points on an imaginary rail and shunt her mind away from “there” and back to Todefright, with its penumbra of wild woods and flying elementals.

Moral goodness might be more like a precious metal than an abundant element in human nature, and even after the ore has been processed and refined in accordance with the prescriptions of the CEV proposal, who knows whether the principal outcome will be shining virtue, indifferent slag, or toxic sludge?

Murky Water, Dusty Mirror Murky water is turbid; let it settle and it clears. A dusty mirror is dim; clean it and it is bright. What I realize as I observe this is the Tao of clarifying the mind and perceiving its essence. The reason why people's minds are not clear and their natures are not stable is that they are full of craving and emotion. Add to this eons of mental habit, acquired influences deluding the mind, their outgrowths clogging up the opening of awareness - this is like water being murky, like a mirror being dusty. The original true mind and true essence are totally lost. The feelings and senses are unruly, subject to all kinds of influences, taking in all sorts of things, defiling the mind. If one can suddenly realize this and change directions, wash away pollution and contamination, gradually remove a lifetime of biased mental habits, wandering thoughts and perverse actions, increasing in strength with persistence, refining away the dross until there is nothing more to be refined away, when the slag is gone the gold is pure. The original mind and fundamental essence will spontaneously appear in full, the light of wisdom will suddenly arise, and one will clearly see the universe as though it were in the palm of the hand, with no obstruction. This is like murky water returning to clarity when settled, like a dusty mirror being restored to brightness when polished. That which is fundamental is as ever: without any lack.

Well, she’s a deepspace mulebitch, all right,” Pytha murmurs in a monotone delivery that erodes punctuation and inflection. “Probably packing a hundred million credits of iron. Slag me but that’s a crew I’d like to be on.” “Must you swear so early in the morning?” I ask. “Shit, sorry, moon boy. Forgot to mind my fucking manners.

There were office-worn gents with yellow faces, bent backs, and one shoulder set slightly higher than the other from spending hours hunched over desks. And their sad, anxious faces spoke volumes about their domestic troubles, never-ending money worries, and all those old hopes which had been dashed for good; for they all belonged to the army of poor threadbare drudges who just about make ends meet in some dismal plasterboard house with a flowerbed for a garden in the rubbish-and-slag-heap belt on the outskirts of Paris.

This other man he could never see in his entirety but he seemed an artisan and a worker in metal. The judge enshadowed him where he crouched at his trade but he was a coldforger who worked with hammer and die, perhaps under some indictment and an exile from men's fires, hammering out like his own conjectural destiny all through the night of his becoming some coinage for a dawn that would not be. It is this false moneyer with his gravers and burins who seeks favor with the judge and he is at contriving from cold slag brute in the crucible a face that will pass, an image that will render this residual specie current in the markets where men barter. Of this is the judge judge and the night does not end.

Med ett gott hjärta, du kan vinna många slag.

Fear was like heat applied to steel: Applied correctly it might forge a blade; overused, it turned metal to slag.

De store seire er aldri vunnet i det første slag.

Are we all going to die?” A cheer from the Daughters in the cavern rattles the cell. “Yes,” Diomedes says. “Probably,” I correct, annoyed at the man’s pessimism. “You talked forever,” Diomedes mutters at me. “And looked weak.” “You basically told them to slag off and shoot you,” I snap. The Daughters cheer in the cavern again. “Apparently you both were terrible.

Werner Pfennig grows up three hundred miles northeast of Paris in a place called Zollverein: a four-thousand-acre coalmining complex outside Essen, Germany. It’s steel country, anthracite country, a place full of holes. Smokestacks fume and locomotives trundle back and forth on elevated conduits and leafless trees stand atop slag heaps like skeleton hands shoved up from the underworld.

Driftglass," I said. "You know all the Coca-Cola bottles and cut-crystal punch bowls and industrial silicon slag that goes into the sea?" I know the Coca-Cola bottles." They break, and the tide pulls the pieces back and forth over the sandy bottom, wearing the edges, changing their shape. Sometimes chemicals in the glass react with chemicals in the ocean to change the color. Sometimes veins work their way through in patterns like snowflakes, regular and geometric; others, irregular and angled like coral. When the pieces dry, they're milky. Put them in water and they become transparent again.

meteoroid had hit with such force it melted the ground around it, making it look like foundry slag. The heat turned quartz intrusions in the bedrock into chunks of colored glass. The Dry Valleys We went on like this for hours, as though there was no being done with the astonishment landscapes might offer us, or to the potential for any seemingly inconsequential thing out there to startle and inform, or

kjære Gud mamma ga meg en samuraikriger i dag det er sånn hun ser meg sier hun som er latterlig tenkte jeg først som betyr at hun ikke vet noe om om hvem jeg er en kriger? med sverd og øks og kniv i beltet? og rustning? så sjekka jeg litt nærmere og fant ut at en samurai opprinnelig var en slags livvakt eller tjener en som passer på og steller med dem som fortjener det og sånn vil jeg gjerne være

I am a massive slag!" I think to myself, in a motivational way. "I'm a Lady Sex Adventuress! I'm a Pirate of Privates! I'm a swashfuckler!" ... I think of "Teenage Whore" by Courtney Love as my personal anthem.

The north smells different from the city: clearer, thinner. You can see farther. A sawmill, a hill of sawdust, the teepee shape of a sawdust burner; the smokestacks of the copper smelters, the rocks around them bare of trees, burnt-looking, the heaps of blackened slag: I’ve forgotten about these things all winter, but here they are again, and when I see them I remember them, I know them, I greet them as if they are home.

I was learning the craft of poetry, which really was an intensive version of what my mother had taught me all those years ago -- the craft of writing as the art of thinking. Poetry aims for an economy of truth -- loose and useless words were not separate from loose and useless thoughts. Poetry was not simply the transcription of notions -- beautiful writing rarely is. I wanted to learn to write, which was ultimately, still, as my mother had taught me, a confrontation with my own innocence, my own rationalizations. Poetry was the processing of my thoughts until the slag of justification fell away and I was left with the cold steel truths of life.

Ow!" Aideen suddenly hollered which earned a bark from my bedroom. "Go back asleep you fat shite!" Aideen shouted when I swiped the antiseptic wipe over a small cut above her eye. I hissed at her, "Leave him alone, he isn't fat. He just has a thick coat!" Aideen laughed through her hissing. "Yeah, a thick coat of blubber." I gave her a firm look. "Don't slag me baby when I'm cleanin' you up. Me finger might slip and jam into your eye.

Slowly the poison the whole blood stream fills. It is not the effort nor the failure tires. The waste remains, the waste remains and kills. It is not your system or clear sight that mills Down small to the consequence a life requires; Slowly the poison the whole blood stream fills. They bled an old dog dry yet the exchange rills Of young dog blood gave but a month's desires. The waste remains, the waste remains and kills. It is the Chinese tombs and the slag hills Usurp the soil, and not the soil retires. Slowly the poison the whole blood stream fills. Not to have fire is to be a skin that shrills. The complete fire is death. From partial fires The waste remains, the waste remains and kills. It is the poems you have lost, the ills From missing dates, at which the heart expires. Slowly the poison the whole blood stream fills. The waste remains, the waste remains and kills. - 'Missing Dates

She laughed. "It's hard to believe we ever lived long enough to evolve out of that. If you chop off its legs, they won't regrow." She cocked her head, fascinated. "It's as delicate as rock. You break it, and it never comes back together.

There’s no such thing as a perfect friend, any more than there’s any such thing as a perfect anything, and if you slag everyone in your life for their many and varied failings, you’re going to miss appreciating the good stuff they bring to the table.

I thought of my river, the Afon-Lwydd, that my father had fished in youth, with rod and line for the leaping salmon under the drooping alders. The alders, he said, that fringed the banks ten deep, planted by the wind of the mountains. But no salmon leap in the river now, for it is black with furnace washings and slag, and the great silver fish have been beaten back to the sea or gasped out of their lives on sands of coal. No alders stand now for thy have been chopped as fuel for the cold blast. Even the mountains are shells, groaning in their hollows of emptiness, trembling to the arrows of the pit-props in their sides, bellowing down the old workings that collapse in unseen dust five hundred feet below. Plundered is my country, violated, raped.

Taxin kommer för snabbt och jag inser att jag inte har valt ut några böcker. Tanken på att stiga ombord på ett flygplan utan bok ger mig panik. Rätt bok kan vara ett slags guide, något som sätter tonen för resan eller till och med får den att byta riktning.

Too often critics have taken as the sole and crucial matter of fantasy the preoccupation of Tolkien, the quest for a remedy to the world's pain that will not destroy innocence with the temptations of power. Impressive and popular as The Lord of the Rings is, it manages its landscapes, vast green-leaved or slag-heaped vistas of pathetic fallacy and implied morality, far better than its people; it leaves the impression that important issues have been turned by sleight of hand and Georgian prettiness into questions of good and bad practice in urban planning and rural conservation. After all, the Grail is only worth seeking if you can believe in a god who put it there to help those who help themselves, in an Avalon to which burned-out heroes can retire with dignity. There is another great Matter for fantasy, one of more obvious resonance for the creative artist - the reconciliation of faerie and humanity; of the passion, power and wit of a world of sensuality, magic, and danger with the requirements of kind and ordinary life.

In his delirium he ransacked the linens of his pallet for arms but there were none. The judge smiled. The fool was no longer there but another man and this other man he could never see in his entirety but he seemed an artisan and a worker in metal. The judge enshadowed him where he crouched at his trade but he was a coldforger who worked with hammer and die, perhaps under some indictment and an exile from men’s fires, hammering out like his own conjectural destiny all through the night of his becoming some coinage for a dawn that would not be. It is this false moneyer with his gravers and burins who seeks favor with the judge and he is at contriving from cold slag brute in the crucible a face that will pass, an image that will render this residual specie current in the markets where men barter. Of this is the judge judge and the night does not end.

Och att de sedan, efter allt världen hade lärt dem, inte kände igen bojorna när de fästes vid deras händer och fötter. South Carolinas bojor var av ett nytt slag – nycklarna och tillhållarna präglades av lokala syften – men fungerade ändå som bojor. De hade inta alls kommit särskilt långt.

That spring, rain fell in great sweeping gusts that rattled the rooftops. Water found its way into the smallest cracks and undermined the sturdiest foundations. Chunks of land that had been steady for generations fell like slag heaps on the roads below, taking houses and cars and swimming pools down with them.

At finde en Slags Trøst i at prale med, at man er blevet skuffet, er ogsaa en meget farlig Vane, hvoraf der snart opstaar en hensynsløs Letsindighed Ringeagt for Sandheden. At nedsætte, hvad der duer, ved at rose, hvad der ikke duer, er en af dens bagvendte Glæder, og man kan ikke ustraffet spille bold med Sandheden.

How to explain his country to her, he wondered. How to explain that leaving its confines to sail upon the Sea of Japan - that was being free. Or that as a boy, sneaking from the smelter floor for an hour to run with other boys in the slag heaps, even though there were guards everywhere, because there were guards everywhere - that was the purest freedom.

Once I thought that to be human was the highest aim a man could have, but I see now that it was meant to destroy me. Today I am proud to say I am inhuman, that I belong not to men and governments, that I have nothing to do with creeds and principles. . . . I belong to the earth! . . . And I join my slime, my excrement, my madness,my ecstasy to the great circuit which flows through the subterranean vaults of the flesh. . . . Side by side with the human race there runs another race of beings, the inhuman ones, the race of artists. . . . Out of the dead compost and the inert slag they breed a song that contaminates. . . . “I love everything that flows,” said the great blind Milton of our times [Joyce]. I was thinking of him this morning . . . of his rivers and trees and all that world of night that he is exploring. Yes, I said to myself, I too love everything that flows: rivers, sewers, lava, semen, blood, bile, words, sentences. I love the amniotic fluid when it spills out of the bag. . . . I love the urine that pours out scalding and the clap that runs endlessly.

Allez Louis Standaert, Paul Verstraeten, Gérard Cludts, Arnaud Franssen, Frans Fransen, Martine Lievens, hou nu eens op met op jullie lui gat te zitten, in een confortabele stoel. Wij moeten aan de slag, desnoods tot we er het hoofd bij leggen. Maar strijdend wil ik ten onder gaan. Waar is jullie gebalde vuist van weleer? We kunnen het nog altijd als we in onszelf blijven geloven!

Förresten hade pappan börjat tänka på ett alldeles nytt sätt. Mer och mer sällan funderade han över allt han hade varit med om under sitt vänliga och brokiga liv, och lika sällan drömde han om vad alla de kommande dagarna skulle ge honom. Hans tankar gled som båten, utan minnen och drömmar, de var som gråa vandrande vågor som inte ens hade lust att komma fram till horisonten. Pappan försökte inte prata med hatifnattarna längre. Han stirrade ut över havet som de, hans ögon hade blivit bleka som deras och lånade himlens växlande färg. Och när nya öar kom emot dem rörde han sig inte, bara svansen slog några slag mot durken. Jag undrar, tänkte pappan en gång när de glöd framåt i en lång trött dyning, jag undrar om jag inte håller på att börja likna en hatifnatt.

... det är bra för en människa att meditera över de drömmar hon haft. Då framstår den passiva tron på vetenskapen som en verklighetsflykt lika mycket som mysticismen. Därför är arbete och handling nödvändiga. Men de måste vara grundade på tro. Frågan är hur vi kan skaffa oss en tro värdig livet. ... 'Jag tror på livet och människorna', hade Ahmed sagt. 'Jag anser det vara min plikt att stödja deras ideal, så länge de är riktiga, för passivitet i det fallet innebär feghet och flykt. Jag anser det också vara min plikt att motarbeta deras ideal, om jag tror att de är felaktiga, för passivitet då innebär förräderi.' Man kunde fråga sig: vad är riktigt och vad är felaktigt? Men kanske tvivlet var ett slags verklighetsflykt liksom mysticismen och den passiva tron på vetenskapen. Likväl: kunde man på samma gång vara en idealisk lärare, en idealisk äkta man och en ständig revoltör?

The wave of pure outrage blindsided me. I shouldn't be here, I thought. This is utterly fucked up. I should have been sitting in a garden down the road, barefoot with a drink in my hand, swapping the day's work stories with Peter and Jamie. I had never thought about this before, and it almost knocked me over: all the things we should have had. We should have stayed up all night together studying and stressing out before exams, Peter and I should have argued over who got to bring Jamie to our first dance and slagged her about how she looked in her dress. We should have come weaving home together, singing and laughing and inconsiderate, after drunken college nights. We could have shared a flat, taken off Interrailing around Europe, gone arm-in-arm through dodgy fashion phases and low-rent gigs and high-drama love affairs. Two of us might have been married by now, given the other one a godchild. I had been robbed blind.

Kärlek kan man inte samla i lador. Finns det en del av Jesus i vartenda massfabricerat krucifix? Alla offer som vi inte själva mördar eller spärrar in är inbillade offer. Och F. sa: Jag bär mitt hjärta som en krona. Så försvann de, de spetälskevita metoperna och trygliferna och alla de andra snirkliga namnen som står för renhet; bleka tempel och förfallna altaren försvann under den scharlakansröda glasyren. Det ursprungligaste i en människas natur är ofta det som är det mest desperata. Således påtvingas världen nya system av människor som helt enkelt inte står ut med att leva med det som är. Det enda som betyder något för en skapare är att hans system är unikt. Mitt hat till smärtan är nåt så extra kolossalt fantastisk, mycket viktigare än ditt hat till smärtan, men min kropp är så mycket mera central, jag är smärtans Moskva, du är bara en väderstation på landet. Var med mig, religiösa amuletter av alla slag, ni smo hänger i silverkedjor, ni som sitter fastmålade på underkläder med en säkerhetsnål, ni som gömmer er i svart brösthår, ni som löper som spårvagnshjul i springan mellan gamla lyckliga kvinnors bröst, ni som av misstag pressas in i skinnet när någon älskar, ni som fingras som mynt och på vilka man letar efter silverstäplar, ni som har kommit bort bland kläderna för kelande femtonåringar, ni som stoppas i mun medan man tänker, ni mycket dyrbara som bara spinkiga små flickebarn för lov att bära, ni som hänger i skärpkammare tillsammans med uppknutna slipsar, ni som blir kyssta för att bringa tur, ni som rycks från halsen i vredesmod, ni som är pressade, ni som är graverade, ni som blir lagda på spårvägsspår för att få en ny och lustig form, ni som sitter fast i innerklädseln i taxitak... Vi ljuger alla dröm efter dröm i varandras armar. Morgon efter morgon finner vintern mig ensam bland slitna löv med fruset snor och frusna tårar i ögonbrynnen.

John thinks that the laws of the universe may themselves be evolving. He asks such questions as where were the laws of physics before the universe was created. Was there, is there a matrix, a mother field, existing outside time? All this is a bit thorny for me. I don’t know. I believe that the laws are the laws. I believe that the reason there are millions of planets is the same reason there are millions of eggs. To allow for failure. There must be countless experimental situations like this one. The only thing that is not expendable is the experiment itself. Our notions of our own uniqueness are precisely that. Our notions. We will not be missed. When we have slaughtered and poisoned everything in sight and finally incinerated the earth itself then that black and lifeless lump of slag will simply revolve in the void forever. There is a place for it too. A nameless cinder of no consequence even to God. That man can halt this disaster now seems so remote a possibility as to hardly bear consideration.

Hela villan, från den vitkalkade terassen till radioantennen, var sådan - prydlig, putsad och på det hela taget oälskad och meningslös. Husets herre betraktade den som ett skämt. Vad beträffar Martha var det varken estetiska hänsyn eller känsloskäl som styrde hennes smak, hon ansåg bara helt enkelt att en tämligen rik tysk affärsman i nittonhundratjugotalets Berlin borde ha ett hem av precis detta slag, det vill säga det skulle vara av precis samma villaförstadstyp som de hus andra personer i hans ställning hade.

I do indulge that sometimes, too, gulping down blame with a powerful thirst. But I did say indulge. There’s a self-aggrandizement in these wallowing mea culpas, a vanity. Blame confers an awesome power. And it’s simplifying, not only to onlookers and victims but to culprits most of all. It imposes order on slag. Blame conveys clear lessons in which others may take comfort: if only she hadn’t—, and by implication makes tragedy avoidable. There may even be a fragile peace to be found in the assumption of total responsibility,

We were enemies as children. Now let us be allies as men. You’re the sword, I’m the pen.” Dancer would want me to accept the offer. It would guarantee my survival. Guarantee my meteoric rise. I would be inside the halls of the ArchGovernor’s mansion. I would be near the man who killed Eo. Oh, I want to accept. But then I would have to let the Proctors beat me. I’d have to let this little whorefart win and let his father smile and feel pride. I’d have to watch that smug smile spread across his bloodydamn face. Slag that. They’ll feel pain. The

The only real enemy humans have is death. Every other enemy like a kid who slags you off at school or a cop who pulls you over you think they're enemies but they're not really. They're just I don't know irritations. But death that's the serious one because you know he'll win eventually. And that makes you like you've got to try to beat him. The bigger the challenge the harder you try. That's true of anything. In a way our enemies aren't these soldiers themselves our enemy is death and the soldiers are just his little local representatives." -Homer

Let’s just run through this again, shall we?” said the Demon King. He leaned back in his throne. “You happened to find the Tezumen one day and decided, I think I recall your words correctly, that they were ‘a bunch of Stone-Age no-hopers sitting around in a swamp being no trouble to anyone,’ am I right? Whereupon you entered the mind of one of their high priests—I believe at that time they worshipped a small stick—drove him insane and inspired the tribes to unite, terrorize their neighbors and bring forth upon the continent a new nation dedicated to the proposition that all men should be taken to the top of ceremonial pyramids and be chopped up with stone knives.” The King pulled his notes toward him. “Oh yes, some of them were also to be flayed alive,” he added. Quezovercoatl shuffled his feet. “Whereupon,” said the King, “they immediately engaged in a prolonged war with just about everyone else, bringing death and destruction to thousands of moderately blameless people, ekcetra, ekcetra. Now, look, this sort of thing has got to stop.” Quezovercoatl swayed back a bit. “It was only, you know, a hobby,” said the imp. “I thought, you know, it was the right thing, sort of thing. Death and destruction and that.” “You did, did you?” said the King. “Thousands of more-or-less innocent people dying? Straight out of our hands,” he snapped his fingers, “just like that. Straight off to their happy hunting ground or whatever. That’s the trouble with you people. You don’t think of the Big Picture. I mean, look at the Tezumen. Gloomy, unimaginative, obsessive…by now they could have invented a whole bureaucracy and taxation system that could have turned the minds of the continent to slag. Instead of which, they’re just a bunch of second-rate axe-murderers. What a waste.

It sets one dreaming—to interchange thoughts with beings whose thinking had an organic background wholly different from ours (other senses, other appetites), to be unenviously humbled by intellects possibly superior to our own yet able for that very reason to descend to our level, to descend lovingly ourselves if we met innocent and childlike creatures who could never be as strong or as clever as we, to exchange with the inhabitants of other worlds that especially keen and rich affection which exists between unlikes; it is a glorious dream. But make no mistake. It is a dream. We are fallen. We know what our race does to strangers. Man destroys or enslaves every species he can. Civilized man murders, enslaves, cheats, and corrupts savage man. Even inanimate nature he turns into dust bowls and slag-heaps. There are individuals who don’t. But they are not the sort who are likely to be our pioneers in space. Our ambassador to new worlds will be the needy and greedy adventurer or the ruthless technical expert. They will do as their kind has always done. What that will be if they meet things weaker than themselves, the black man and the red man can tell. If they meet things stronger, they will be, very properly, destroyed.

Eind van de middag, ik was net uit school thuisgekomen (daar had ik zorgvuldig geheimgehouden dat ik jarig was om te voorkomen dat ik zou moeten trakteren, want daarvoor wilde mijn moeder mij geen versnaperingen meegeven), kwam mijn grootvader met zijn cadeau aanzetten. Aan de alsmaar naderbij komende, zeer krachtige tikken van zijn wandelstok op de trottoirtegels kon je horen dat hij zich erop verheugde andermaal een naar hem vernoemde kleinzoon gul te bedelen. Hij droeg een groot pak en overhandigde mij dat in de woonkamer. Plechtig verwijderde ik het papier. Wat mij op mijn achtste jaar ten deel was gevallen, bleek een vorstelijke meccanodoos te zijn. Weliswaar geen nieuwe fiets, maar toch iets ongehoords. Mijn grootvader verwijderde zich weer, want er was op dat moment niemand bij de hand om mee te dammen. Mij leek toen het grote ogenblik gekomen om de meccanodoos verder uit te pakken en ermee aan de slag te gaan. Toen ik aanstalten maakte om hem te openen, riep mijn moeder: 'Wat doe je nou?' 'Ik ga hem openmaken, ik wil ermee spelen.' 'Ben je helemaal betoeterd geworden? Zo'n duur cadeau. Blijf af.' 'Maar... maar... ik heb hem toch van opa gekregen. Ik wil ermee spelen.' 'Geen sprake van, afblijven. Zo'n duur cadeau, en daar wou je zomaar met je tengels aanzitten? Niks hoor, ik zet hem weg.' Ze pakte de meccanodoos op en plaatste hem achter lakens en slopen in het dressoir. Toen mijn vader thuiskwam, werd de doos weer tevoorschijn gehaald en wederom vol verbazing aanschouwd. Zeker, het was geen nieuwe fiets, maar toch... Wat een cadeau. 'Opa 't Hart is maar goed op je,' zei mijn vader. 'Maar ik mag er niet mee spelen,' zei ik verongelijkt. 'Nee, natuurlijk niet,' zei mijn vader, 'daar heeft je moeder groot gelijk in, zo'n duur cadeau, het zou gekkenwerk zijn als je daar met je poten aan zou zitten. D'r kan zomaar een schroefje of moertje of ander onderdeeltje kwijtraken, niks hoor, je moeder bergt hem weer netjes op.' 'Zo is het,' zei mijn moeder, en weg ging de meccanodoos.

There were many factors that made a handgun either accurate or not accurate. The velocity of the round and the length of the barrel were the most important, aided or not by aerodynamic subtleties like the degree of spin imparted by the rifling grooves, which either worked well or didn’t, depending on the bullet. Precision of manufacture was influential, with careful machining of quality metal much preferred over casting from leftover slag. Not that anything much mattered at seven feet. A pore to the left or a wrinkle to the right was immaterial. The human face was a big enough target, generally hard to miss at close quarters, and the man-on-first’s was no exception.

Die arme Swann,' zei Mme des Laumes die avond tegen haar echtgenoot, 'hij is altijd even aardig, maar hij ziet er doodongelukkig uit. U zult het wel zien, want hij heeft beloofd een van deze dagen te komen eten. Ik vind het eigenlijk belachelijk dat een man met zijn intelligentie lijdt om een vrouw van dat slag, een die niet eens interessant is, want het moet een idioot zijn, zegt men,' voegde ze eraan toe met de wijsheid van mensen die niet verliefd zijn en vinden dat een geestrijk man alleen ongelukkig zou mogen zijn om een vrouw die de moeite waard is; wat ongeveer gelijk staat aan verbaasd zijn dat iemand zich verwaardigt aan de cholera te lijden door toedoen van iets zo nietigs als de kommabacil.

Today, what you think of this past, how you relate to it, determines what you think about the future of Ukraine. And what you think of the past is quite likely to be bound up with the history of your own family and where you live. This is true for the Donbass, a mining region, just as it is for anywhere else. People came from all over the Soviet Union to work and settle in this flat land pockmarked by pyramids and hills of slag and scruffy little mining and industrial towns. Donetsk was a working-class mining town. For many of its inhabitants then, Ukraine, which had been part of imperial Russia, was not a land where they had roots. With the demise of the Soviet Union it was harder for many of these people, almost all of whom spoke Russian as their first language, to identify with or to love Ukraine as their own country

Then a thought hit me like a ton of slag. Arlene wouldn’t bother taking time in this hellhole to scribble her mark unless she had a damned good reason. Not just to point out the sphere—if she knew it was there, she’d have used it herself like a good soldier. The only logical conclusion was that the arrow pointed the way out of the nuclear plant—the way Arlene Sanders had already gone. Like Arne Saknussen, she marked her own trail for all who followed. So why hadn’t I found it? Same way Arlene missed the patio door: there had to be another hidden door nearby that I had missed. Third time’s the charm. The damned door couldn’t have been more than five feet from the one I had found. One good push and it was open, leading to a beautiful piece of straight, well-lit corridor that reached its end with a clean, massive metal door that had printed on it the welcome letters EXIT—obviously a holdover from the plant’s mundane days as a hangout for humans. Feeling bold and unstoppable, I walked right up to that door and discovered that it required a computer key card before it would bless the lonely traveler with an open sesame. Great. Now I could be miserable again.

He is refining us. He is teaching us to trust him. He is drawing us away from our strength to his. He knows exactly how much heat to allow in our lives. He will never scorch us, but if we jump out of one cauldron because it's too hot, he has others waiting. The dross must be removed. Do you know how the ancient refiner knew when he was finished, and the heat could finally be turned down? It was when he looked into the cauldron and saw his own reflection in the shining silver. As long as the image was muddy and rippled with flecks of slag, he knew he had to keep working. When his face finally showed clearly, the silver had been purified. This is exactly how it is with our spiritual refining process. God's eternal plan is for us 'to be conformed to the likeness of his Son' (Romans 8:29). Jesus Christ continues today as the Refiner and Purifier of his people. As he carefully works on our lives, he keeps looking into us to see his own blessed reflection. Shall we not trust Christ and surrender to this process, rather than fighting it? Remember that it is a process of love to bring beauty and growth and enlargement in our lives. It is God's way of sanctifying us. And we must never forget that the holier the life, the more true happiness we experience within. It is the spiritual impurities that rob us of God's best.

DAYS ONE THROUGH SIX, ETC. You keep on asking me that – “Which day was the hardest?” Blockheads! They were all hard – And of course, since I’m omnipotent, they were all easy. It was Chaos, to begin with. Can you imagine Primeval Chaos? Of course you can’t. How long had it been swirling around out there? Forever. How long had I been there? Longer than that. It was a mess, that’s what it was. Chaos is Rocky. Fuzzy. Slippery. Prickly. As scraggly and obstreperous as the endless behind of an infinite jackass. Shove on it anywhere, it gives, then slips in behind you, like smog, like lava, like slag. I’m telling you, chaos is – chaotic. You see what I was up against. Who could make a world out of that muck? I could, that’s who – land from water, light from dark, and so on. It might seem like a piece of cake now that it’s done, but back then, without a blueprint, without a set of instructions, without a committee, could you have created a firmament? Of course there were bugs in the process, grit in the gears, blips, bloopers – bringing forth grass and trees on Day Three and not making sunlight until Day Four, that, I must say, wasn’t my best move. And making the animals and vegetables before there was any rain whatsoever – well, anyone can have a bad day. Even Adam, as it turned out, wasn’t such a great idea – those shifty eyes, the alibis, blaming things on his wife – I mean, it set a bad example. How could he expect that little toddler, Cain, to learn correct family values with a role model like him? And then there was the nasty squabble Over the beasts and birds. OK, I admit I told Adam to name them, but – Platypus? Aardvark? Hippopotamus? Let me make one thing perfectly clear – he didn’t get that gibberish from Me. No, I don’t need a planet to fall on Me, I know something about subtext. He did it to irritate Me, just plain spite – and did I need the aggravation? Well, as you know, things went from bad to worse, from begat to begat, father to son, the evil fruit of all that early bile. So next there was narcissism, then bigotry, then jealousy, rage, vengeance! And finally I realized, the spawn of Adam had become exactly like – Me. No Deity with any self-respect would tolerate that kind of competition, so what could I do? I killed them all, that’s what! Just as the Good Book says, I drowned man, woman, and child, like so many cats. Oh, I saved a few for restocking, Noah and his crew, the best of the lot, I thought. But now you’re back to your old tricks again, just about due for another good ducking, or maybe a giant barbecue. And I’m warning you, if I have to do it again, there won’t be any survivors, not even a cockroach! Then, for the first time since it was Primeval Chaos, the world will be perfect – nobody in it but Me.

In Tokyo, ramen is a playground for the culinary imagination. As long as the dish contains thin wheat noodles, it's ramen. In fact, there's a literal ramen playground called Tokyo Ramen Street in the basement of Tokyo Station, with eight top-rated ramen shops sharing one corridor. We stopped by one evening after a day of riding around on the Shinkansen. After drooling over the photos at establishments such as Junk Garage, which serves oily, brothless noodles hidden under a towering slag heap of toppings, we settled on Ramen Honda based on its short line and the fact that its ramen seemed to be topped with a massive pile of scallions. However, anything in Tokyo that appears to be topped with scallions is actually topped with something much better. You'll meet this delectable dopplegänger soon, and in mass quantities. The Internet is littered with dozens if not hundreds of exclamation point-bedecked ramen blogs (Rameniac, GO RAMEN!, Ramen Adventures, Ramenate!) in English, Japanese, and probably Serbian, Hindi, and Xhosa. In Tokyo, you'll find hot and cold ramen; Thai green curry ramen; diet ramen and ramen with pork broth so thick you could sculpt with it; Italian-inspired tomato ramen; and Hokkaido-style miso ramen. You'll find ramen chains and fiercely individual holes-in-the-wall. Right now, somewhere in the world, someone is having a meet-cute with her first bowl of ramen. As she fills up on pork and noodles and seaweed and bamboo shoots, she thinks, we were meant to be together, and she is embarrassed at her atavistic reaction to a simple bowl of soup.

De Britse premier David Cameron, die ondertussen al ontslag heeft genomen, gaat straks de geschiedenis in als de kinkel die pokerde en verloor. De voorstanders van een brexit met een aantal racisten als voortrekkers (stijl Nigel Farage en Boris oh nson) hebben hun slag thuisgehaad waardoor het Verenigd Koninkrijk nooit nog kan terugkeren in de EU. De leuze "Storm is raging over het Channel, the continent is isoltated" heeft het gehaald. Het fiere Albion is teruggekeerd. Dat de Briiten Europa de rug toekeerden is al bij al verstaanbaar. De EU is een grijs en onaantrekkelijk Europa gedomineerd door bureaucraten en gekenmerkt door een groot democratisch deficit. Maar win werkelijkheid stemden de Britten over een heel ander pijnpunt, over de vreemdelingenkwestie. Misleid door alle leugens die de leavers schaamteloos voor waarheid verzwendelden. Het grootste nadeel van de exit is dat Europa nu niet langer nog kan dromen van een sterk Europees leger dan zich bewapent met Europese tuigen i.p.v. Amerikaanse, en dat het nu nog meer vastzit aan de Verenigde Staten voor zijn veiligheid. En als daar Donald Trump de presidentsverkiezingen wint dan wordt de wereld waarin wij leven op slag een flink stuk gevaarlijker dan die nu, met de islamfundamentalisten, al is. Ondertussen staan in het grijze Europa al andere racisten klaar - bijvoorbeeld Geert Wilders - om een exit uit Europa te eisen. De beurzen kleuren ondertussen bloedrood. Het Britse pond verloor 16 procent van zijn waarde. Wie à la baisse speculeerde op het pond heeft zijn inleg forst zien stijgen. Een oud klant van mij belde me zopas nog op dat hij 2,5 miljoen euro play money geriskeerd heeft en dat dit er nu 20,4 miljoen zijn geworden.

In that sleep and in sleeps to follow the judge did visit. Who would come other? A great shambling mutant, silent and serene. Whatever his antecedents he was something wholly other than their sum, nor was there system by which to divide him back into his origins for he would not go. Whoever would seek out his history through what unraveling of loins and ledgerbooks must stand at last darkened and dumb at the shore of a void without terminus or origin and whatever science he might bring to bear upon the dusty primal matter blowing down out of the millennia will discover no trace of any ultimate atavistic egg by which to reckon his commencing. In the white and empty room he stood in his bespoken suit with his hat in his hand and he peered down with his small and lashless pig’s eyes wherein this child just sixteen years on earth could read whole bodies of decisions not accountable to the courts of men and he saw his own name which nowhere else could he have ciphered out at all logged into the records as a thing already accomplished, a traveler known in jurisdictions existing only in the claims of certain pensioners or on old dated maps. In his delirium he ransacked the linens of his pallet for arms but there were none. The judge smiled. The fool was no longer there but another man and this other man he could never see in his entirety but he seemed an artisan and a worker in metal. The judge enshadowed him where he crouched at his trade but he was a coldforger who worked with hammer and die, perhaps under some indictment and an exile from men’s fires, hammering out like his own conjectural destiny all through the night of his becoming some coinage for a dawn that would not be. It is this false moneyer with his gravers and burins who seeks favor with the judge and he is at contriving from cold slag brute in the crucible a face that will pass, an image that will render this residual specie current in the markets where men barter. Of this is the judge judge and the night does not end.

Let’s just run through this again, shall we?” said the Demon King. He leaned back in his throne. “You happened to find the Tezumen one day and decided, I think I recall your words correctly, that they were ‘a bunch of Stone-Age no-hopers sitting around in a swamp being no trouble to anyone,’ am I right? Whereupon you entered the mind of one of their high priests—I believe at that time they worshipped a small stick—drove him insane and inspired the tribes to unite, terrorize their neighbors and bring forth upon the continent a new nation dedicated to the proposition that all men should be taken to the top of ceremonial pyramids and be chopped up with stone knives.” The King pulled his notes toward him. “Oh yes, some of them were also to be flayed alive,” he added. Quezovercoatl shuffled his feet. “Whereupon,” said the King, “they immediately engaged in a prolonged war with just about everyone else, bringing death and destruction to thousands of moderately blameless people, ekcetra, ekcetra. Now, look, this sort of thing has got to stop.” Quezovercoatl swayed back a bit. “It was only, you know, a hobby,” said the imp. “I thought, you know, it was the right thing, sort of thing. Death and destruction and that.” “You did, did you?” said the King. “Thousands of more-or-less innocent people dying? Straight out of our hands,” he snapped his fingers, “just like that. Straight off to their happy hunting ground or whatever. That’s the trouble with you people. You don’t think of the Big Picture. I mean, look at the Tezumen. Gloomy, unimaginative, obsessive…by now they could have invented a whole bureaucracy and taxation system that could have turned the minds of the continent to slag. Instead of which, they’re just a bunch of second-rate axe-murderers. What a waste. Quezovercoatl squirmed. The King swiveled the throne back and forth a bit. “Now, I want you to go straight back down there and tell them you’re sorry,” he said. “Pardon?” “Tell them you’ve changed your mind. Tell them that what you really wanted them to do was strive day and night to improve the lot of their fellow men. It’ll be a winner.

Colonel Fedmahn Kassad shouted a FORCE battle cry and charged through the dust storm to intercept the Shrike before it covered the final thirty meters to where Sol Weintraub crouched next to Brawne Lamia. The Shrike paused, its head swiveling frictionlessly, red eyes gleaming. Kassad armed his assault rifle and moved down the slope with reckless speed. The Shrike shifted. Kassad saw its movement through time as a slow blur, noting even as he watched the Shrike that movement in the valley had ceased, sand hung motionless in the air, and the light from the glowing Tombs had taken on a thick, amberish quality. Kassad’s skinsuit was somehow shifting with the Shrike, following it through its movements through time. The creature’s head snapped up, attentive now, and its four arms extended like blades from a knife, fingers snapping open in sharp greeting. Kassad skidded to a halt ten meters from the thing and activated the assault rifle, slagging the sand beneath the Shrike in a full-power wide-beam burst. The Shrike glowed as its carapace and steel-sculpture legs reflected the hellish light beneath and around it. Then the three meters of monster began to sink as the sand bubbled into a lake of molten glass beneath it. Kassad shouted in triumph as he stepped closer, playing the widebeam on the Shrike and ground the way he had sprayed his friends with stolen irrigation hoses in the Tharsis slums as a boy. The Shrike sank. Its arms splayed at the sand and rock, trying to find purchase. Sparks flew. It shifted, time running backward like a reversed holie, but Kassad shifted with it, realizing that Moneta was helping him, her suit slaved to his but guiding him through time, and then he was spraying the creature again with concentrated heat greater than the surface of a sun, melting sand beneath it, and watching the rocks around it burst into flame. Sinking in this cauldron of flame and molten rock, the Shrike threw back its head, opened its wide crevasse of a mouth, and bellowed. Kassad almost stopped firing in his shock at hearing noise from the thing. The Shrike’s scream resounded like a dragon’s roar mixed with the blast of a fusion rocket. The screech set Kassad’s teeth on edge, vibrated from the cliff walls, and tumbled suspended dust to the ground. Kassad switched to high-velocity solid shot and fired ten thousand microfléchettes at the creature’s face.