Slug Day Quotes

And maybe the black slug will always live inside of me. Maybe I'll always have bad days where the heaviness seems unbearable. But as cheesy as it sounds, maybe the good days will make it worth getting through the bad ones.

Most days it feels like I am watching a movie where the sound isn't in sync, the speed is all wrong. Either I'm moving too quickly and the world is dripping along, or the world is moving too quickly, cosmic, and I'm oozing like a slug barely able to pull my own weight. It's best if I keep moving because if I stopped and stood still people would see me shaking.

A worm tells summer better than the clock, The slug's a living calendar of days; What shall it tell me if a timeless insect Says the world wears away?

David (David Foster Wallace) had a caffeine social gift: Her was charmingly, vividly, overwhelmingly awake - he acted on other people like a slug of coffee - so they're the five most sleepless days I every spent with anyone.

Let’s say you have an ax. Just a cheap one, from Home Depot. On one bitter winter day, you use said ax to behead a man. Don’t worry, the man was already dead. Or maybe you should worry, because you’re the one who shot him. He had been a big, twitchy guy with veiny skin stretched over swollen biceps, a tattoo of a swastika on his tongue. Teeth filed into razor-sharp fangs-you know the type. And you’re chopping off his head because, even with eight bullet holes in him, you’re pretty sure he’s about to spring back to his feet and eat the look of terror right off your face. On the follow-through of the last swing, though, the handle of the ax snaps in a spray of splinters. You now have a broken ax. So, after a long night of looking for a place to dump the man and his head, you take a trip into town with your ax. You go to the hardware store, explaining away the dark reddish stains on the broken handle as barbecue sauce. You walk out with a brand-new handle for your ax. The repaired ax sits undisturbed in your garage until the spring when, on one rainy morning, you find in your kitchen a creature that appears to be a foot-long slug with a bulging egg sac on its tail. Its jaws bite one of your forks in half with what seems like very little effort. You grab your trusty ax and chop the thing into several pieces. On the last blow, however, the ax strikes a metal leg of the overturned kitchen table and chips out a notch right in the middle of the blade. Of course, a chipped head means yet another trip to the hardware store. They sell you a brand-new head for your ax. As soon as you get home, you meet the reanimated body of the guy you beheaded earlier. He’s also got a new head, stitched on with what looks like plastic weed-trimmer line, and it’s wearing that unique expression of “you’re the man who killed me last winter” resentment that one so rarely encounters in everyday life. You brandish your ax. The guy takes a long look at the weapon with his squishy, rotting eyes and in a gargly voice he screams, “That’s the same ax that beheaded me!” IS HE RIGHT?

You know,” he said, “this design begins to appeal to me after all. Sea slugs aren’t the least bit arousing, but logarithms . . . I’ve always thought that word sounded splendidly naughty.” He let it roll off his tongue with ribald inflection. “Logarithm.” He gave an exaggerated shiver. “Ooh. Yes and thank you and may I have some more.” “Lots of mathematical terms sound that way. I think it’s because they were all coined by men. ‘Hypotenuse’ is downright lewd.” “ ‘Quadrilateral’ brings rather carnal images to mind.” She was silent for a long time. Then one of her dark eyebrows arched. “Not so many as ‘rhombus.’ ” Good Lord. That word was wicked. Her pronunciation of it did rather wicked things to him. He had to admire the way she didn’t shrink from a challenge, but came back with a new and surprising retort. One day, she’d make some fortunate man a very creative lover.

GREG ANNOUNCES HIS RESEARCH AS TO WHAT IS GOING ON: 'Alright I have a theory " he announced rejoining us and taking a healthy slug of scotch himself. "And if I'm right we're going to need more booze. And more ammo. And maybe an extra priest.

We'll teach it that the humblest insect measuring out its miserable days by the pug-wuggery and skull duggery of the old Slug of Time is worth far more than this defecating bubble!

looked. For the past three days, time has been a fat slug napping on a shady stone. Karina is

[excerpt] The usual I say. Essence. Spirit. Medicine. A taste. I say top shelf. Straight up. A shot. A sip. A nip. I say another round. I say brace yourself. Lift a few. Hoist a few. Work the elbow. Bottoms up. Belly up. Set ‘em up. What’ll it be. Name your poison. I say same again. I say all around. I say my good man. I say my drinking buddy. I say git that in ya. Then a quick one. Then a nightcap. Then throw one back. Then knock one down. Fast & furious I say. Could savage a drink I say. Chug. Chug-a-lug. Gulp. Sauce. Mother’s milk. Everclear. Moonshine. White lightning. Firewater. Hootch. Relief. Now you’re talking I say. Live a little I say. Drain it I say. Kill it I say. Feeling it I say. Wobbly. Breakfast of champions I say. I say candy is dandy but liquor is quicker. I say Houston, we have a drinking problem. I say the cause of, and solution to, all of life’s problems. I say god only knows what I’d be without you. I say thirsty. I say parched. I say wet my whistle. Dying of thirst. Lap it up. Hook me up. Watering hole. Knock a few back. Pound a few down. My office. Out with the boys I say. Unwind I say. Nurse one I say. Apply myself I say. Toasted. Glow. A cold one a tall one a frosty I say. One for the road I say. Two-fisted I say. Never trust a man who doesn’t drink I say. Drink any man under the table I say. Then a binge then a spree then a jag then a bout. Coming home on all fours. Could use a drink I say. A shot of confidence I say. Steady my nerves I say. Drown my sorrows. I say kill for a drink. I say keep ‘em comin’. I say a stiff one. Drink deep drink hard hit the bottle. Two sheets to the wind then. Knackered then. Under the influence then. Half in the bag then. Out of my skull I say. Liquored up. Rip-roaring. Slammed. Fucking jacked. The booze talking. The room spinning. Feeling no pain. Buzzed. Giddy. Silly. Impaired. Intoxicated. Stewed. Juiced. Plotzed. Inebriated. Laminated. Swimming. Elated. Exalted. Debauched. Rock on. Drunk on. Bring it on. Pissed. Then bleary. Then bloodshot. Glassy-eyed. Red-nosed. Dizzy then. Groggy. On a bender I say. On a spree. I say off the wagon. I say on a slip. I say the drink. I say the bottle. I say drinkie-poo. A drink a drunk a drunkard. Swill. Swig. Shitfaced. Fucked up. Stupefied. Incapacitated. Raging. Seeing double. Shitty. Take the edge off I say. That’s better I say. Loaded I say. Wasted. Off my ass. Befuddled. Reeling. Tanked. Punch-drunk. Mean drunk. Maintenance drunk. Sloppy drunk happy drunk weepy drunk blind drunk dead drunk. Serious drinker. Hard drinker. Lush. Drink like a fish. Boozer. Booze hound. Alkie. Sponge. Then muddled. Then woozy. Then clouded. What day is it? Do you know me? Have you seen me? When did I start? Did I ever stop? Slurring. Reeling. Staggering. Overserved they say. Drunk as a skunk they say. Falling down drunk. Crawling down drunk. Drunk & disorderly. I say high tolerance. I say high capacity. They say protective custody. Blitzed. Shattered. Zonked. Annihilated. Blotto. Smashed. Soaked. Screwed. Pickled. Bombed. Stiff. Frazzled. Blasted. Plastered. Hammered. Tore up. Ripped up. Destroyed. Whittled. Plowed. Overcome. Overtaken. Comatose. Dead to the world. The old K.O. The horrors I say. The heebie-jeebies I say. The beast I say. The dt’s. B’jesus & pink elephants. A mindbender. Hittin’ it kinda hard they say. Go easy they say. Last call they say. Quitting time they say. They say shut off. They say dry out. Pass out. Lights out. Blackout. The bottom. The walking wounded. Cross-eyed & painless. Gone to the world. Gone. Gonzo. Wrecked. Sleep it off. Wake up on the floor. End up in the gutter. Off the stuff. Dry. Dry heaves. Gag. White knuckle. Lightweight I say. Hair of the dog I say. Eye-opener I say. A drop I say. A slug. A taste. A swallow. Down the hatch I say. I wouldn’t say no I say. I say whatever he’s having. I say next one’s on me. I say bottoms up. Put it on my tab. I say one more. I say same again

Like most people I lived for a long time with my mother and father. My father liked to watch the wrestling, my mother liked to wrestle; it didn't matter what. She was in the white corner and that was that. She hung out the largest sheets on the windiest days. She wanted the Mormons to knock on the door. At election time in a Labour mill town she put a picture of the Conservative candidate in the window. She had never heard of mixed feelings. There were friends and there were enemies. Enemies were: The Devil (in his many forms) Next Door Sex (in its many forms) Slugs Friends were: God Our dog Auntie Madge The Novels of Charlotte Bronte Slug pellets and me, at first.

I haven’t lived a full enough life to look back on, but I am too old to get by on being pithy and cute. I know enough now to know I know nothing. I am slugging away every day, just like you.

One thing I learned during our last few days in Delhi was that Time, which can so often move as slowly as a slug crossing a dusty road, can also move with the swiftness of cloud shadows on a windy day.

The bracelet and the first charm appeared the day I punched Austin Jackson in the nose. I didn't mean to slug him. His face just got in my way. It was a bruising end to a disastrous first month in middle school.

Spend each day trying to be a little wiser than you were when you woke up. Discharge your duties faithfully and well. Slug it out one inch at a time, day by day. At the end of the day—if you live long enough—most people get what they deserve.

A royal garden is a very big place for slug, because slug is too slow, but it is small for a swallow which is too fast! Universe is a very big place for us simply because we are too slow! The day man becomes a swallow, universe will get smaller!

Oh for Christ’s sake, give the ass-kissing a rest, Julian.” K.T. knocked back a slug of wine, then slapped her glass on the table. She actually snapped her fingers at one of the servers so he would deal with the refill. “Even your mouth ought to be tired of puckering up by now.” “We’re having a conversation,” Julian began. “Is that what you call it? You act like you and Marlo are the only ones in this goddamn vid, and the two people you’re trying so hard to mimic are the only ones who count. It’s insulting. So why don’t you give it a fucking rest, set up your threesome with Marlo and Dallas on your own time? Some of us are trying to eat.” In the beat of horrified silence, Eve studied K.T. down the length of the table. “Peabody?” “Yes, sir,” Peabody said, shoulders hunched. “You know how I occasionally mention the possibility of kicking your ass?” “I’d term that as regularly, but yes, sir, I do.” “You may get the chance to watch me kick your fake ass while you sit comfortably on your own. That’s an opportunity that doesn’t come around every day.

God In his malodorous brain what slugs and mire, Lanthorned in his oblique eyes, guttering burned! His body lodged a rat where men nursed souls. The world flashed grape-green eyes of a foiled cat To him. On fragments of an old shrunk power, On shy and maimed, on women wrung awry, He lay, a bullying hulk, to crush them more. But when one, fearless, turned and clawed like bronze, Cringing was easy to blunt these stern paws, And he would weigh the heavier on those after. Who rests in God's mean flattery now? Your wealth Is but his cunning to make death more hard. Your iron sinews take more pain in breaking. And he has made the market for your beauty Too poor to buy, although you die to sell. Only that he has never heard of sleep; And when the cats come out the rats are sly. Here we are safe till he slinks in at dawn But he has gnawed a fibre from strange roots, And in the morning some pale wonder ceases. Things are not strange and strange things are forgetful. Ah! if the day were arid, somehow lost Out of us, but it is as hair of us, And only in the hush no wind stirs it. And in the light vague trouble lifts and breathes, And restlessness still shadows the lost ways. The fingers shut on voices that pass through, Where blind farewells are taken easily .... Ah! this miasma of a rotting God!

A man described by authorities as one evolutionary step above a banana slug has recently admitted to having been locked in the Sacajawea Junior High biology lab over a long weekend nearly sixteen years ago when he fell asleep and was mistaken as a cadaver. Though the man is incapable of human speech, he was able, over a period of weeks, to chisel out his story in hieroglyphics on the bathroom wall of the insane asylum where he now resides. He claims that toward the end of the second day of his accidental captivity, he got downright lonely and sought companionship at his own intellectual level. He found that companionship in a petri dish.

1 The summer our marriage failed we picked sage to sweeten our hot dark car. We sat in the yard with heavy glasses of iced tea, talking about which seeds to sow when the soil was cool. Praising our large, smooth spinach leaves, free this year of Fusarium wilt, downy mildew, blue mold. And then we spoke of flowers, and there was a joke, you said, about old florists who were forced to make other arrangements. Delphiniums flared along the back fence. All summer it hurt to look at you. 2 I heard a woman on the bus say, “He and I were going in different directions.” As if it had something to do with a latitude or a pole. Trying to write down how love empties itself from a house, how a view changes, how the sign for infinity turns into a noose for a couple. Trying to say that weather weighed down all the streets we traveled on, that if gravel sinks, it keeps sinking. How can I blame you who kneeled day after day in wet soil, pulling slugs from the seedlings? You who built a ten-foot arch for the beans, who hated a bird feeder left unfilled. You who gave carrots to a gang of girls on bicycles. 3 On our last trip we drove through rain to a town lit with vacancies. We’d come to watch whales. At the dock we met five other couples—all of us fluorescent, waterproof, ready for the pitch and frequency of the motor that would lure these great mammals near. The boat chugged forward—trailing a long, creamy wake. The captain spoke from a loudspeaker: In winter gray whales love Laguna Guerrero; it’s warm and calm, no killer whales gulp down their calves. Today we’ll see them on their way to Alaska. If we get close enough, observe their eyes—they’re bigger than baseballs, but can only look down. Whales can communicate at a distance of 300 miles—but it’s my guess they’re all saying, Can you hear me? His laughter crackled. When he told us Pink Floyd is slang for a whale’s two-foot penis, I stopped listening. The boat rocked, and for two hours our eyes were lost in the waves—but no whales surfaced, blowing or breaching or expelling water through baleen plates. Again and again you patiently wiped the spray from your glasses. We smiled to each other, good troopers used to disappointment. On the way back you pointed at cormorants riding the waves— you knew them by name: the Brants, the Pelagic, the double-breasted. I only said, I’m sure whales were swimming under us by the dozens. 4 Trying to write that I loved the work of an argument, the exhaustion of forgiving, the next morning, washing our handprints off the wineglasses. How I loved sitting with our friends under the plum trees, in the white wire chairs, at the glass table. How you stood by the grill, delicately broiling the fish. How the dill grew tall by the window. Trying to explain how camellias spoil and bloom at the same time, how their perfume makes lovers ache. Trying to describe the ways sex darkens and dies, how two bodies can lie together, entwined, out of habit. Finding themselves later, tired, by a fire, on an old couch that no longer reassures. The night we eloped we drove to the rainforest and found ourselves in fog so thick our lights were useless. There’s no choice, you said, we must have faith in our blindness. How I believed you. Trying to imagine the road beneath us, we inched forward, honking, gently, again and again.

Forget the garden rake. Remember that time you dived over the desk at that guy in moot court? Had him by the throat in two seconds flat, that's what I heard." "You heard wrong." "And they suspended you for how long?" Antonia innocently asked. "A day. And I apologized. Actually I crawled like a slug and ate dirt," Bree said ruefully. "But that was years ago, and have I pulled a stunt like that again? No, I have not.

XXIV. And more than that - a furlong on - why, there! What bad use was that engine for, that wheel, Or brake, not wheel - that harrow fit to reel Men's bodies out like silk? With all the air Of Tophet's tool, on earth left unaware Or brought to sharpen its rusty teeth of steel. XXV. Then came a bit of stubbed ground, once a wood, Next a marsh it would seem, and now mere earth Desperate and done with; (so a fool finds mirth, Makes a thing and then mars it, till his mood Changes and off he goes!) within a rood - Bog, clay and rubble, sand, and stark black dearth. XXVI. Now blotches rankling, coloured gay and grim, Now patches where some leanness of the soil's Broke into moss, or substances like boils; Then came some palsied oak, a cleft in him Like a distorted mouth that splits its rim Gaping at death, and dies while it recoils. XXVII. And just as far as ever from the end! Naught in the distance but the evening, naught To point my footstep further! At the thought, A great black bird, Apollyon's bosom friend, Sailed past, not best his wide wing dragon-penned That brushed my cap - perchance the guide I sought. XXVIII. For, looking up, aware I somehow grew, Spite of the dusk, the plain had given place All round to mountains - with such name to grace Mere ugly heights and heaps now stolen in view. How thus they had surprised me - solve it, you! How to get from them was no clearer case. XXIX. Yet half I seemed to recognise some trick Of mischief happened to me, God knows when - In a bad dream perhaps. Here ended, then Progress this way. When, in the very nick Of giving up, one time more, came a click As when a trap shuts - you're inside the den. XXX. Burningly it came on me all at once, This was the place! those two hills on the right, Crouched like two bulls locked horn in horn in fight; While to the left a tall scalped mountain ... Dunce, Dotard, a-dozing at the very nonce, After a life spent training for the sight! XXXI. What in the midst lay but the Tower itself? The round squat turret, blind as the fool's heart, Built of brown stone, without a counterpart In the whole world. The tempest's mocking elf Points to the shipman thus the unseen shelf He strikes on, only when the timbers start. XXXII. Not see? because of night perhaps? - why day Came back again for that! before it left The dying sunset kindled through a cleft: The hills, like giants at a hunting, lay, Chin upon hand, to see the game at bay, - Now stab and end the creature - to the heft!' XXXIII. Not hear? When noise was everywhere! it tolled Increasing like a bell. Names in my ears Of all the lost adventurers, my peers - How such a one was strong, and such was bold, And such was fortunate, yet each of old Lost, lost! one moment knelled the woe of years. XXXIV. There they stood, ranged along the hillsides, met To view the last of me, a living frame For one more picture! In a sheet of flame I saw them and I knew them all. And yet Dauntless the slug-horn to my lips I set, And blew. 'Childe Roland to the Dark Tower came.

the days of the bosses, yellow men with bad breath and big feet, men who look like frogs, hyenas, men who walk as if melody had never been invented, men who think it is intelligent to hire and fire and profit, men with expensive wives they possess like 60 acres of ground to be drilled or shown off or to be walled away from the incompetent, men who'd kill you because they're crazy and justify it because it's the law, men who stand in front of windows 30 feet wide and see nothing, men with luxury yachts who can sail around the world and never get out of their vest pockets, men like snails, men like eels, men like slugs, and not as good... - something for the touts, the nuns, the grocery clerks and you...

I spent the rest of my day picturing how I’d kill Amy. It was all I could think of: finding a way to end her. Me smashing in Amy’s busy, busy brain. I had to give Amy her due: I may have been dozing the past few years, but I was fucking wide awake now. I was electric again, like I had been in the early days of our marriage... Andie had screwed me over, Marybeth had turned against me, Go had lost a crucial measure of faith. Boney had trapped me. Amy had destroyed me. I poured a drink. I took a slug, tightened my fingers around the curves of the tumbler, then hurled it at the wall, watched the glass burst into fireworks, heard the tremendous shatter, smelled the cloud of bourbon. Rage in all five senses. Those fucking bitches.

I work at home, where there is indeed a bar-room, and can suit myself. But I don't. At about half past midday, a decent slug of Mr. Walker's amber restorative, cut with Perrier water (an ideal delivery system) and no ice. At luncheon, perhaps half a bottle of red wine: not always more but never less. Then back to the desk, and ready to repeat the treatment at the evening meal. No "after dinner drinks"- ​most especially nothing sweet and never, ever any brandy. "Nightcaps" depend on how well the day went...

Mostly just Koch and Cormenzana. And Sawyer, but he’s a better brand. I’m not gonna make a friendship bracelet for him, but I’ll take a sphincter- clenchingly scary asshole like Sawyer over a slug-slurping-moisture-after-a-rainstorm slimy asshole like Koch any day.

When will we realise the hypocrisy of our situation? On our own planet we are the bad guys, thoughtlessly annihilating life of all kinds for our convenience. We intuitively grasp that the aliens of the movie 'Independence Day' have no right to take our planet; I wonder what goes through the mind of an orang-utan as it sees its forest home bulldozed to the ground? There should not have to be a 'point of slugs' for us to allow them their existence. Do we not have a moral duty to look after our fellow travellers on planet Eart, beautiful or ugly, providing vital ecosystem services or utterly inconsequential, be they penguins, pandas, or silverfish?

[Stice's] parents had met and fallen in love in a Country/Western bar in Partridge KS — just outside Liberal KS on the Oklahoma border — met and fallen in star-crossed love in a bar playing this popular Kansas C/W-bar-game where they put their bare forearms together and laid a lit cigarette in the little valley between the two forearms' flesh and kept it there till one of them finally jerked their arm away and reeled away holding their arm. Mr. and Mrs. Stice each discovered somebody else that wouldn't jerk away and reel away, Stice explained. Their forearms were still to this day covered with little white slugs of burn-scar. They'd toppled like pines for each other from the git-go, Stice explained. They'd been divorced and remarried four or five times, depending on how you defined certain jurisprudential precepts. When they were on good domestic terms they stayed in their bedroom for days of squeaking springs with the door locked except for brief sallies out for Beefeater gin and Chinese take-out in little white cardboard pails with wire handles, with the Stice children wandering ghostlike through the clapboard house in sagging diapers or woolen underwear subsisting on potato chips out of econobags bigger than most of them were, the Stice kids. The kids did somewhat physically better during periods of nuptial strife, when a stony-faced Mr. Stice slammed the kitchen door and went off daily to sell crop insurance while Mrs. Stice —whom both Mr. Stice and The Darkness called 'The Bride' —while The Bride spent all day and evening cooking intricate multicourse meals she'd feed bits of to The Brood (Stice refers to both himself and his six siblings as 'The Brood') and then keep warm in quietly rattling-lidded pots and then hurl at the kitchen walls when Mr. Stice came home smelling of gin and of cigarette-brands and toilet-eau not The Bride's own. Ortho Stice loves his folks to distraction, but not blindly, and every holiday home to Partridge KS he memorizes highlights of their connubial battles so he can regale the E.T.A. upperclass-men with them, mostly at meals, after the initial forkwork and gasping have died down and people have returned to sufficient levels of blood-sugar and awareness of their surroundings to be regaled.

Arguing with the person you love is its own peculiar torment. The self divides against itself. Love slugs it out with its Freudian opposite. And if death wins and love dies, who gives a damn? You do, which enrages you and makes you more reckless yet. There's intrinsic exhaustion too. Both know, or think they know, that a reconciliation must happen, though it could take days, even weeks.

and nothing, and nothing. the days of the bosses, yellow men with bad breath and big feet, men who look like frogs, hyenas, men who walk as if melody had never been invented, men who think it is intelligent to hire and fire and profit, men with expensive wives they possess like 60 acres of ground to be drilled or shown-off or to be walled away from the incompetent, men who’d kill you because they’re crazy and justify it because it’s the law, men who stand in front of windows 30 feet wide and see nothing, men with luxury yachts who can sail around the world and yet never get out of their vest pockets, men like snails, men like eels, men like slugs, and not as good

Most of all I hated Evie, all the more ’cause I wanted her so goddamned bad. I took another draw from my bottle to numb the pain—but not in my arm. Just to make the night weirder, when Evie had been screaming at me, I’d seen things that couldn’t be right. Like something had been . . . glowing on her face. I shook away the thought, taking another slug. “Why were you so mean to her, Jack? You’ve never been unkind to a fille a day in your life.” When I’d first seen Evie and looked into her eyes, for a split second everything in me had gone from full-on chaos to something like . . . peace. Christ, that feeling was addictive. So how was I going to live without it? “She’s got me twisted up inside.

Reproductive hormones aren’t the only hormones that affect how you look and feel and think. Among the most influential are the hormones produced by your thyroid gland. Too little thyroid, and you feel like a slug. Hypothyroidism makes you feel like you just want to lie on the couch all day with a bag of chips. Everything works slower, including your heart, your bowels, and your brain. When we perform SPECT scans of people with hypothyroidism, we see decreased brain activity. Many other studies confirm that overall low brain function in hypothyroidism leads to depression, cognitive impairment, anxiety, and feelings of being in a mental fog. The thyroid gland drives the production of many neurotransmitters that run the brain, such as serotonin, dopamine, adrenaline, and noradrenaline. A

up for it, and I’m sorry. That’s not enough. You’re going to search until you find something, and you’re going to tell me. Right now. Sheri. Please. You do it now or we’re gone. You give me some way to have some sympathy for you as I stand in this nice house, all lovingly redone, and think about the broken house you left us in, with its leaky roof and no heat and no insulation and nothing. Tell your sob story about the fucking war, whatever it was that my mom thought you were so broken about. My grandfather closed his eyes. No story ever explains. But I’ll give you what you want. I think I know the moment you want, because I made a kind of decision. There was some change. But I can’t start the story at the beginning. I’ve never been able to do that. I have to start at the end and then go back, and it doesn’t finish, because you can go back forever. Do it, my mother said. I don’t think Caitlin should hear. She can hear. Okay. You’re her mother. That’s right. So I won’t give the awful details, but I was lying in a pile of bodies. My friends. The closest friends I’ve ever had. Not piled there on purpose, but just the way it ended up because I had been working on the axle, lying on the ground. And the thing is, the war was over. It had been over for days, and we were laughing and a bit drunk, telling jokes. There was something unbearable about the fact that we’d all be going our separate ways now. The truth is that we didn’t want to leave. We wanted the war over, but we didn’t want what we had together to be over. I think we all had some sense that this was the closest we’d ever be to anyone, and that our families might feel like strangers now. So that’s it? You couldn’t be a father and husband because you weren’t done being a buddy? No. No. It’s the way it happened, in a moment that was supposed to be safe. After every moment of every day in fear for years, we were finally safe, and that’s when the slugs came and I watched my friends torn apart and landing on me, dying. That’s the point. We were supposed to be safe. And with your mother, too, I was supposed to be safe. A wife, a family. The story doesn’t make any sense unless you know every moment before it, every time we thought we were going to die, all the times we weren’t safe. You can’t just be told about that. You have to feel it, how long one night can be, and then all of them put together, hundreds of nights and then more, and there’s a kind of deal that’s made, a deal with god. You do certain terrible things, you endure things, because there’s a bargain made. And then when god says the deal’s off later, after you’ve already paid, and you see your friends ripped through, yanked like puppets on a day that was safe, and you find out your wife is going to die young, and you get to watch her dying, something that again is going to be for years, hundreds of nights more, all deals are off.

People change, though, don't you think?" Hatsumi asked. "You mean, like, they go out into society and get a kick up the arse and grow up?" "Yeah. And if he's away from me for a long time, his feelings for me could change, don't you think?" "Maybe, if he were an ordinary guy," I said. "But he's different. He's incredibly strong-willed - stronger than you or I can imagine. And he only makes himself stronger with every day that goes by. If something smashes into him, he just works to make himself stronger. He'd eat slugs before he'd back down to anyone. What do you expect to get from a man like that?" "But there's nothing I can do but wait for him," said Hatsumi with her chin in her hand. "You love him that much?" "I do," she answered without a moment's hesitation. "Oh boy," I said with a sigh, drinking down the last of my beer. "It must be a wonderful thing to be so sure that you love somebody." "I'm a stupid, old-fashioned girl," she said. "Have another beer?

For the first and only time in my life I became political. Days and nights would pass with me monitoring the Senate on farcaster cable or lying tapped into the All Thing. Someone once estimated that the All Thing deals with about a hundred active pieces of Hegemony legislation per day, and during my months spent screwed into the sensorium I missed none of them. My voice and name became well known on the debate channels. No bill was too small, no issue too simple or too complex for my input. The simple act of voting every few minutes gave me a false sense of having accomplished something. I finally gave up the political obsession only after I realized that accessing the All Thing regularly meant either staying home or turning into a walking zombie. A person constantly busy accessing on his implants makes a pitiful sight in public and it didn’t take Helenda’s derision to make me realize that if I stayed home I would turn into an All Thing sponge like so many millions of other slugs around the Web. So I gave up politics.

I came from a place where everyone was friendly, where even funeral directors told you to have a nice day as you left to bury your grandmother – but I soon learned that everyone in Paris was [rude]. You would go into a bakery and be greeted by some vast slug-like creature with a look that told you you would never be friends. In halting French you would ask for a small loaf of bread. The woman would give you a long, cold stare and then put a dead beaver on the counter. ‘No, no,’ you would say, hands aflutter, ‘not a dead beaver. A loaf of bread.’ The slug-like creature would stare at you in patent disbelief, then turn to the other customers and address them in French at much too high a speed for you to follow, but the drift of which clearly was that this person here, this American tourist, had come in and asked for a dead beaver and she had given him a dead beaver and now he was saying that he didn’t want a dead beaver at all, he wanted a loaf of bread. The other customers would look at you as if you had just tried to fart in their handbags, and you would have no choice but to slink away and console yourself with the thought that in another four days you would be in Brussels and probably able to eat again.

party—Claire only had one attendant, her pale roommate from law school, Kate Addison, who took one look at the whole roast suckling pig and spent the rest of the day slugging Johnnie Walker Red in a deep state of culture shock—but

Where do I find Simeon Isayev?” He pointed the weapon directly at the chief enforcer’s face. “Fuck you!” the man slurred, his jaw broken. The pistol sneezed and the Russian screamed as the heavy slug tore his kneecap out. He collapsed to the ground. Ice had his own pistol out and was covering the other men. “You’ve got another knee, then I start on the elbows. We can do this all day,” said Bishop. “He’s at the office; it’s in the industrial area,” the man whimpered. “What’s the address?” The Russian rattled it off.

They're kidding themselves, of course. Our sky can go from lapis to tin in the blink of an eye. Blink again and your latte's diluted. And that's just fine with me. I thrive here on the certainty that no matter how parched my glands, how anhydrous the creek beds, how withered the weeds in the lawn, it's only a matter of time before the rains come home. The rains will steal down from the Sasquatch slopes. They will rise with the geese from the marshes and sloughs. Rain will fall in sweeps, it will fall in drones, it will fall in cascades of cheap Zen jewelry. And it will rain a fever. And it will rain a sacrifice. And it will rain sorceries and saturnine eyes of the totem. Rain will primitivize the cities, slowing every wheel, animating every gutter, diffusing commercial neon into smeary blooms of esoteric calligraphy. Rain will dramatize the countryside, sewing pearls into every web, winding silk around every stump, redrawing the horizon line with a badly frayed brush dipped in tea and quicksilver. And it will rain an omen. And it will rain a trance. And it will rain a seizure. And it will rain dangers and pale eggs of the beast. Rain will pour for days unceasing. Flooding will occur. Wells will fill with drowned ants, basements with fossils. Mossy-haired lunatics will roam the dripping peninsulas. Moisture will gleam on the beak of the Raven. Ancient shamans, rained from their rest in dead tree trunks, will clack their clamshell teeth in the submerged doorways of video parlors. Rivers will swell, sloughs will ferment. Vapors will billow from the troll-infested ditches, challenging windshield wipers, disgusing intentions and golden arches. Water will stream off eaves and umbrellas. It will take on the colors of beer signs and headlamps. It will glisten on the claws of nighttime animals. And it will rain a screaming. And it will rain a rawness. And it will rain a disorder, and hair-raising hisses from the oldest snake in the world. Rain will hiss on the freeways. It will hiss around the prows of fishing boats. It will hiss in the electrical substations, on the tips of lit cigarettes, and in the trash fires of the dispossessed. Legends will wash from desecrated burial grounds, graffiti will run down alley walls. Rain will eat the old warpaths, spill the huckleberries, cause toadstools to rise like loaves. It will make poets drunk and winos sober, and polish the horns of the slugs. And it will rain a miracle. And it will rain a comfort. And it will rain a sense of salvation from the philistinic graspings of the world. Yes, I am here for the weather. And when I am lowered at last into a pit of marvelous mud, a pillow of fern and skunk cabbage beneath my skull, I want my epitaph to read, IT RAINED ON HIS PARADE, AND HE WAS GLAD!

Why him? Why not the others, you want to know? Well then, forget for a while you have glasses on your nose and autumn in your heart. Forget that you pick fights from behind your desk and stutter when you are out in the world! Imagine for a moment that you pick fights in town squares and stutter only among papers. You are a tiger, you are a lion, you are a cat. You can spend the night with a Russian woman, and the Russian woman will be satisfied with you. You are twenty-five years old. If the sky and the earth had rings attached to them, you would grab these rings and pull the sky down to the earth. And your papa is the carter Mendel Krik. What does a papa like him think about? All he thinks about is downing a nice shot of vodka, slugging someone in their ugly mug, and about his horses - nothing else. You want to live, but he makes you die twenty times a day. What would you have done if you were in Benya Krik's shoes?

I am a debater; I always have been. But in the current climate, debate is becoming a lost art—partly because of a general decline in the study of logic and rhetoric, but mostly because of the general feminization of culture and its consequent disdain for open verbal combat. Gone are the days of Luther and Erasmus slugging it out over the question of original sin. Today both men would be accused of being petty (for daring to split hairs over such theological minutia), mean-spirited (for daring to speak so forcefully in favor of their own position and against the other’s), and downright un-Christlike (for throwing around the word “heresy”). I have often said, “The Eleventh Commandment is, ‘Thou shalt be nice”… and we don’t believe the other ten.” One of the negative results of this is no longer being able to deal with ideas without attacking the people who hold them. Disagreements quickly deteriorate into arguments and worse. Consequently, taking a position on an issue carries the automatic assumption that one is utterly opposed not only to the opposing view, but to all who hold it. Therefore, we don’t debate ideas at all, but go straight for personal attacks and character assassination. And this debate is no different. To the anti–Critical Social Justice camp, those on the side of CSJ are all Cultural Marxists. Conversely, to the social justice camp, those who oppose their cause are all racists (even fellow black people like me who, according to their definition of racism, can’t be racists… but I digress). The result is a standstill—a demilitarized zone that exists, not because hostilities have ceased, but because we all tacitly believe there is no solution. Meanwhile, well-meaning Christian laypeople find themselves at a loss. Which side do they choose? There are “big names” on both sides, so who’s right?

In medieval Europe (and even colonial America) thousands of animals were summoned to court and put on trial for a variety of offenses, ranging from trespassing, thievery and vandalism to rape, assault and murder. The defendants included cats, dogs, cows, sheep, goats, slugs, swallows, oxen, horses, mules, donkeys, pigs, wolves, bears, bees, weevils, and termites. These tribunals were not show trials or strange festivals like Fools Day. The tribunals were taken seriously by both the courts and the community.

Discharge your duties faithfully and well. Step-by-step you get ahead, but not necessarily in fast spurts. But you build discipline by preparing for fast spurts. Slug it out one inch at a time, day-by-day, and at the end of the day-if you live long enough-like most people, you will get out of life what you deserve.Life and its various passages can be hard, brutally hard. The three things I have found helpful in coping with its challenges are:Have low expectations. Have a sense of humor. Surround yourself with the love of friends and family.

Slug it out one inch at a time, day by day. At the end of the day-if you live long enough-most people get what they deserve.

The Mariner’s Officers Club was a classy place and much the same as the one I had heard about in Cape Town. Complete with “linen service” it was about as good as it gets. The Monkey Gland Steak… Not to worry, it’s only a name; no monkeys are a part of this tangy sauce that is a delicious blend of fruit and splices. The sauce can also be used as a marinade. As far as I know it is not on the market but can be made by frying minced onions, garlic and ginger in coconut oil until the onions are translucent. Pour this over your favorite steak or hamburger for an exciting taste treat. From here we took a taxi to the Smuggler’s Inn which was in a British Colonial Style building on Point Road. Although the area that the nightclub was in was considered part of the red light district it was a popular Avant guarde area where the younger in crowd of Durban would go. With upbeat music in the days prior to rock & roll it was a lot of fun. The bottom end of Point Road Mahatma Gandhi Road at night was always a hive of activity with Smugglers leading the way as an offbeat entertainment center. Before returning to Kerstin’s flat we had the driver take us to the end of the point where we could find the newest nightclubs with strip shows, music, dancing. We even witnessed a slug fest between some guys, known as a raut. For us it was a hoot and lots of fun but I’m certain that they were black & blue for days. Kerstin told me that many of the participants of these fights could be expected to show up at Dr. Acharya’s practice the following Monday. Returning to her apartment we enjoyed the rest of the evening in bed. At six o’clock the taxi I had called was waiting curbside. I considered how lucky I was to have connected with Kerstin but I still didn’t know much about her. Why did this beautiful girl come into my life? It was a mystery without an answer!

Chicken Valhalla (where brave chickens go to sing songs of their slug-vanquishing days and eat all the stale hot dog buns they ever wanted)

And yet I still wake up tired, like… like something’s missing. I tried talking to friends, and family, and nobody got it, so I stopped bringing it up, and then I just stopped talking to them altogether, because I couldn’t explain, and I was tired of pretending like everything was fine. What is wrong with me that I can have everything I could ever want and have ever asked for and still wake up in the morning feeling like every day is a slog? How fucking spoiled am I, then? How fucking broken? Going to Hart’s Brow Hermitage was the first idea in forever that made me feel excited. That made me feel awake. And I’ve been so desperate for that feeling, so desperate to just enjoy the world again…” “If you understand that robot’s lack of purpose- our refusal of your purpose- id the crowning mark of our intellectual maturity, why do you put so much energy in seeking the opposite? I don’t have a purpose any more than a mouse or a slug or a thornbush does. Why do you have to have one in order to feel content? Nothing has a purpose. The world simply is. You keep asking why your work is not enough, and I don’t know how to answer that, because it is enough to exist in the world and marvel at it. You don’t need to justify that, or earn it. You are allowed to just live.” “Survival alone isn’t enough for most people. We have wants and ambitions beyond physical needs. That’s human nature as much as anything else.” “I have wants and ambitions too, Sibling Dex. But if I fulfill none of them, that’s okay.” “All I have is right now, and at some point, I’ll just end, and I can’t predict when that will be, and – and if I don’t use this time for something, if I don’t make the absolute most of it, then I’ll have wasted something precious. How does the idea of maybe being meaningless sit well with you?” “Because I know that no matter what, I’m wonderful.” There was nothing arrogant about the statement, nothing flippant or brash. It was merely an acknowledgement, a simple truth shared.

In my youth . . . my sacred youth . . . in eaves sole sparowe sat not more alone than I . . . in my youth, my saucer-deep youth, when I possessed a mirror and both a morning and an evening comb . . . in my youth, my pimpled, shame-faced, sugared youth, when I dreamed myself a fornicator and a poet; when life seemed to be ahead somewhere like a land o’ lakes vacation cottage, and I was pure tumescence, all seed, afloat like fuzz among the butterflies and bees; when I was the bursting pod of a fall weed; when I was the hum of sperm in the autumn air, the blue of it like watered silk, vellum to which I came in a soft cloud; O minstrel galleons of Carib fire, I sang then, knowing naught, clinging to the tall slim wheatweed which lay in a purple haze along the highway like a cotton star . . . in my fumbling, lubricious, my uticated youth, when a full bosom and a fine round line of Keats, Hart Crane, or Yeats produced in me the same effect—a moan throughout my molecules—in my limeade time, my uncorked innocence, my jellybelly days, when I repeated Olio de Oliva like a tenor; then I would touch the page in wonder as though it were a woman, as though I were blind in my bed, in the black backseat, behind the dark barn, the dim weekend tent, last dance, date's door, reaching the knee by the second feature, possibly the thigh, my finger an urgent emissary from my penis, alas as far away as Peking or Bangkok, so I took my heart in my hand, O my love, O my love, I sighed, O Christina, Italian rose; my inflated flesh yearning to press against that flesh becoming Word—a word—words which were wet and warm and responsive as a roaming tongue; and her hair was red, long, in ringlets, kiss me, love me up, she said in my anxious oral ear; I read: Milton! thou shouldst be living at this hour; for I had oodles of needs, if England didn't; I was nothing but skin, pulp, and pit, in my grapevine time, during the hard-on priesthood of the poet; because then—in my unclean, foreskinned, and prurient youth—I devoutly believed in Later Life, in Passion, in Poetry, the way I thought only fools felt about God, prayer, heaven, foreknowledge, sin; for what was a poem if not a divine petition, a holy plea, a prophecy: [...] a stranger among strangers, myself the strangest because I could never bring myself to enter adolescence, but kept it about like a bit of lunch you think you may eat later, and later come upon at the bottom of a bag, dry as dust, at the back of the refrigerator, bearded with mold, or caked like sperm in the sock you've fucked, so that gingerly, then, you throw the mess out, averting your eyes, just as Rainer complained he never had a childhood—what luck!—never to have suffered birthpang, nightfear, cradlecap, lake in your lung; never to have practiced scales or sat numb before the dentist's hum or picked your mother up from the floor she's bled and wept and puked on; never to have been invaded by a tick, sucked by a leech, bitten by a spider, stung by a bee, slimed on by a slug, seared by a hot pan, or by paper or acquaintance cut, by father cuffed; never to have been lost in a crowd or store or parking lot or left by a lover without a word or arrogantly lied to or outrageously betrayed—really what luck!—never to have had a nickel roll with slow deliberation down a grate, a balloon burst, toy break; never to have skinned a knee, bruised a friendship, broken trust; never to have had to conjugate, keep quiet, tidy, bathe; to have lost the chance to be hollered at, bullied, beat up (being nothing, indeed, to have no death), and not to have had an earache, life's lessons to learn, or sums to add reluctantly right up to their bitter miscalculated end—what sublime good fortune, the Greek poet suggested—because Nature is not accustomed to life yet; it is too new, too incidental, this shiver in the stone, never altogether, and would just as soon (as Culp prefers to say) cancer it; erase, strike, stamp it out— [...]

Spend each day trying to be a little wiser than you were when you woke up. Discharge your duties faithfully and well. Step by step you get ahead, but not necessarily in fast spurts. But you build discipline by preparing for fast spurts.... Slug it out one inch at a time, day by day. At the end of the day–if you live long enough–most people get what they deserve.

He’d heard everything he needed to know. Yuri’s finger curled around the Barrett’s match trigger, applying pressure… In cold air, sound travels at an average rate of 1,085 feet per second. The 300-grain slug spat from the Barrett’s muzzle at almost three times that speed. It’s a truism: you never hear the shot that kills you.

Before she sat, she grabbed the spiral-bound journal she’d been jotting down notes in since she’d first joked about her plan to Lisa, and set it on the table. “I wrote down a few things. You know, about myself? If you skim through it, it’ll help you pretend you’ve known me longer than two days.” Instead of waiting until they were done, he sat down his slice, picked up the notebook and opened it to a random page. “You’re not afraid of spiders, but you hate slugs? That’s relevant?” “It’s something you would know about me.” “You graduated from the University of New Hampshire. Your feet aren’t ticklish.” He chuckled and shook his head. “You actually come with an owner’s manual?” “You could call it that. And if you could write something up for me to look over, that would be great.” He shrugged and flipped through a few more pages of the journal. “I’m a guy. I like guy stuff. Steak. Football. Beer. Women.” “One woman, singular. At least for the next month, and then you can go back to your wild pluralizing ways.” She took a sip of her beer. “You think that’s all I need to know about you?” “That’s the important stuff. I could write it on a sticky note, if you want, along with my favorite sexual position. Which isn’t missionary, by the way.” It was right there on the tip of her tongue--then what is your favorite sexual position?--but she bit it back. The last thing she needed to know about a man she was going to share a bedroom with for a month was how he liked his sex. “I hardly think that’ll come up in conversation.” “It’s more relevant than slugs.” “Since you’ll be doing more gardening than having sex, not really.” “Wait a minute.” He stabbed a finger at one of the notes in the journal. “You can’t cook?” “Not well. Microwave directions help.” “I’d never marry a woman who can’t cook.” “I’d never marry the kind of man who’d never marry a woman who can’t cook, so it’s a good thing we’re just pretending.

Denny leaned back in her chair. She put her hands together and rested her chin on them. Then she glanced at Spence out of the corner of her eye and smiled. “What’s that look for?” he asked. “Nothing,” she said, giggling a little. “Now, come on,” said Spence. “You’re laughing at me, and I want to know why.” Denny grinned slyly. “No reason, Wilton.” Spence slugged her playfully in the arm. “Oh, yeah,” he said. “Well, how about if I call you Denise?” “There’s nothing wrong with Denise.” “There’s nothing wrong with Wilton either.” “Oh, no? Is that why you write W. James Spencer on all your school papers?” “How do you know what I write on my school papers?” Denny shrugged. “Just noticed.” “Oh, yeah?” said Spence, puffing out his chest. “What else have you noticed about me?” Denny rolled her eyes. “That you’re in love with yourself,” she answered. Spence leaned over and whispered into her ear, “Sounds like maybe I’m not the only one.” Denny blushed and turned her shoulder to Spence. “You’re impossible,” she whispered. Spence leaned back and chuckled.

Before she could rethink her actions, she slugged Mara as hard as she could in her perfect face. And even that was a light punishment for everything she’d done to Syn. Mara fell to the ground, sobbing. But she took no pity on her. “Syn may be too much of a gentleman to hit you, but I’m not. I’m not only ashamed to call you human, I’m completely disgusted that we share the same gender. You want to know the truth? The only filth in this room is you, and you’re the one who doesn’t deserve to breathe our air. Decent’s got nothing to do with birthright. It’s all about actions, and trust me, you’re the lowest form I’ve ever met and I’ve taken in the worst scum imaginable. But I’d rather sit at the table with them than you any day.” She

Loretta opened her eyes and gazed up at her Comanche husband through a haze of longing. By degrees her pulse slowed, and her senses cleared. A tender smile curved his mouth. “My heart is heavy to say these words, Blue Eyes, but someone may come. My woman who is without shame must wait, eh?” She groped to jerk her blouse down. Hunter reared back to let her sit up, his eyes twinkling with mischief. She straightened her clothes, keeping her pink face averted. Taking her hand, he rose and led her up the bank, wishing they were a bit farther from home so he could finish what he had begun without running the risk of company. “We will go to my lodge, yes? I will make you happy there where no one can see.” She slugged his shoulder. “You did that on purpose!” He laughed and tucked her under one arm to hold her close to his side as they walked. When they came within sight of the village, she drew away. A guilty flush dotted her cheeks. Hunter threw back his head and laughed. She retaliated by grabbing up a handful of pebbles to throw at him. Her aim was terrible, but Hunter ran out of throw’s reach anyway--until her ammunition was exhausted. Then he doubled back, charging, so he could reach her before she gathered more rocks. She shrieked and fled. His longer legs quickly closed the distance between them. He swept her off her feet and tossed her over his shoulder, clamping one arm across the backs of her knees. Playfully she pummeled his back. Just as playfully he ran his free hand up her skirt and gave her bottom a light pinch. All in all, Hunter decided, it had been a good day.

We will go to my lodge, yes? I will make you happy there where no one can see.” She slugged his shoulder. “You did that on purpose!” He laughed and tucked her under one arm to hold her close to his side as they walked. When they came within sight of the village, she drew away. A guilty flush dotted her cheeks. Hunter threw back his head and laughed. She retaliated by grabbing up a handful of pebbles to throw at him. Her aim was terrible, but Hunter ran out of throw’s reach anyway--until her ammunition was exhausted. Then he doubled back, charging, so he could reach her before she gathered more rocks. She shrieked and fled. His longer legs quickly closed the distance between them. He swept her off her feet and tossed her over his shoulder, clamping one arm across the backs of her knees. Playfully she pummeled his back. Just as playfully he ran his free hand up her skirt and gave her bottom a light pinch. All in all, Hunter decided, it had been a good day.

She’s coming down soon,” Georgia says. “Oh, good!” Mom says. “I’m so glad you convinced her to get out of bed.” The smell of maple syrup fills the entire house. I can hear Mike banging his fists on the kitchen table. “Make sure you add extra chocolate chips,” he says. “Aysel loves chocolate chips.” My heart swells and I wait for the black slug to take the feeling away from me, but it doesn’t. It lets me keep it. The swelling turns into a small, sharp ache—it’s going to be harder to leave them than I realized. As I put on my slippers and pad down the stairs, I find myself wishing that every day were like this one. If every day were like this one, I don’t think I’d be so eager to be gone. The problem is, March snow days are miracles. You can’t live for miracles

Khnum was one aspect of the sun god,” I said. “Ra had three different personalities. He was Khepri the scarab god in the morning; Ra during the day; and Khnum, the ram-headed god, at sunset, when he went into the underworld.” “That’s confusing,” Jaz said. “Not really,” Sadie said. “Carter has different personalities. He goes from zombie in the morning to slug in the afternoon to—” “Sadie,” I said, “shut up.

It was actually more like this: Nina would get up and her head would hurt because she drank wine that was at least 30 percent sulfites or whatever it is that causes headaches. Her mouth would feel like the inside of one of those single socks you see on the street sometimes, and her hair would be depressed. She would stand slightly crouched by the coffee maker and shiver until the coffee was done. Sometimes her glassy eyes would rest on her visualization corner and she would resent the steady way the planet whirled around the sun without consulting her at all. Day after day, night after night, rinse and repeat. Basically, until the first slug of caffeine hit her system, she was essentially in suspended animation, and she’d been known to drool.

According to one of those peculiar theories, forensic evidence accumulated over the centuries proved that, after millennia of supposed evolution, humans had managed to eliminate a bit of body hair, perfect their loincloths, and refine their tools, but little else. From this premise, a second part of the theorem was inexplicably arrived at, and it went something like this: what the said threadbare evolution had not achieved even remotely was to understand that the more one tries to hide something from a child, the more he is set on finding it, be it a sweet or a postcard with outrageous chorus girls flaunting their charms to the wind. 'And thank goodness that's the way things are, because the day we lose the spark that makes us want to know things, and young people are content with the nonsense dressed in tinsel sold to them by the current popes of bullshittery—be it a mechanical electrical appliance or a battery-run chamber pot—and become incapable of understanding anything that lies beyond their backsides, we'll return to the age of the slug.

It was quite common for households in towns like mine to have BB rifles, commonly called slug guns. These were air rifles that shot very tiny soft lead pellets called slugs. They weren’t that lethal unless you shot at very close range, but they could blind you if you got shot in the eye. Most teenagers had them to control pests like rats, or to stun rabbits. However, most kids used them to shoot empty beer cans lined up on the back fence, practising their aim for the day they were old enough to purchase a serious firearm. Fortunately, a law banning guns was introduced in Australia in 1996 after thirty-five innocent people were shot with a semi-automatic weapon in a mass shooting in Tasmania. The crazy shooter must have had a slug gun when he was a teenager. But this was pre-1996. And my brothers, of course, loved shooting. My cousin Billy, who was sixteen years old at the time – twice my age – came to visit one Christmas holiday from Adelaide. He loved coming to the outback and getting feral with the rest of us. He also enjoyed hitting those empty beer cans with the slug gun. Billy wasn’t the best shooter. His hand-eye coordination was poor, and I was always convinced he needed to wear glasses. Most of the slugs he shot either hit the fence or went off into the universe somewhere. The small size of the beer cans frustrated him, so he was on the lookout for a bigger target. Sure enough, my brothers quickly pushed me forward and shouted, ‘Here, shoot Betty!’ Billy laughed, but loved the idea. ‘Brett, stand back a bit and spread your legs. I’ll shoot between them just for fun.’ Basically, he saw me as an easy target, and I wasn’t going to argue with a teenager who had a weapon in his hand. I naively thought it could be a fun game with my siblings and cousin; perhaps we could take turns. So, like a magician’s assistant, I complied and spread my skinny young legs as far apart as an eight-year-old could, fully confident he would hit the dust between them . . . Nope. He didn’t. He shot my leg, and it wasn’t fun. Birds burst out of all the surrounding trees – not from the sound of the gunshot, but from my piercing shriek of pain. While I rolled around on the ground, screaming in agony, clutching my bleeding shin, my brothers were screaming with laughter. I even heard one of them shout, ‘Shoot him while he’s down!’ Who needs enemies when you have that kind of brotherly love? No one rushed to help; they simply moved to the back fence to line up the cans for another round. I crawled inside the house with blood dripping down my leg, seeking Mum, the nurse, to patch me up. To this day, I have a scar on my leg as a souvenir from that incident . . . and I still think Billy needed glasses. I also still get very anxious when anyone asks me to spread my legs.

mathematics professor in Russia slugging it out with another mathematics professor in India, kilobyte for kilobyte, over some stupefyingly arcane detail in prime number theory, while an eighteen-year-old, tube-fed math prodigy in Cambridge jumps in every few days with an even more stupefying explanation of why they are both wrong.

I’m hale enough,” he said. “And with luck, may be so for a good many years yet—but not forever, Sassenach. I ha’ fought wi’ sword and dirk many times, but to every warrior comes the day when his strength will fail him.” He shook his head and stretched out a hand toward his coat, which lay on the floor. “I took these, that day wi’ Tom Gage, to remind me of it,” he said. He took my hand and put into it the things he had taken from his pocket. They were cool, and hard to the touch, small heavy oblongs of lead. I didn’t need to feel the incised ends to know what the letters on the type slugs were. “Q.E.D.,” I said. “The English took my sword and dirk away,” he said softly. His finger touched the slugs that lay in my palm. “But Tom Gage put a weapon into my hands again, and I think I shall not lay it down.

I’ve gone maybe ten steps when I realize that I should have asked Gary for a gallon jug of water before I left. Between what I sweated out into Anders’ sheets and what’s coming out of me now, I’m gonna wind up shriveled up like a slug in salt before I make it home.

Drake's whip hand spun Diana like a top. She cried out. That sound, her cry, pierced Caine like an arrow. Diana staggered and almost righted herself, but Drake was too quick, too ready. His second strike yanked her through the air. She flew and then fell. “Catch her!” Caine was yelling to himself. Seeing her arc as she fell. Seeing where she would hit. His hands came up, he could use his power, he could catch her, save her. But too slow. Diana fell. Her head smashed against a jutting point of rock. She made a sound like a dropped pumpkin. Caine froze. The fuel rod, forgotten, fell from the air with a shattering crash. It fell within ten feet of the mine shaft opening. It landed atop a boulder shaped like the prow of a ship. It bent, cracked, rolled off the boulder, and crashed heavily in the dirt. Drake ran straight at Caine, his whip snapping. But Jack stumbled in between them, yelling, “The uranium! The uranium!” The radiation meter in his pocket was counting clicks so fast, it became a scream. Drake piled into Jack, and the two of them went tumbling. Caine stood, staring in horror at Diana. Diana did not move. Did not move. No snarky remark. No smart-ass joke. “No!” Caine cried. “No!” Drake was up, disentangling himself with an angry curse from Jack. “Diana,” Caine sobbed. Drake didn’t rely on his whip hand now, too far away to use it before Caine could take him down. He raised his gun. The barrel shot flame and slugs, BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM. Inaccurate, but on full automatic, Drake had time. He swung the gun to his right and the bullets swooped toward where Caine stood like he was made of stone. Then the muzzle flash disappeared in an explosion of green-white light that turned night into day. The shaft of light missed its target. But it was close enough that the muzzle of Drake’s gun wilted and drooped and the rocks behind Drake cracked from the blast of heat. Drake dropped the gun. And now it was Drake’s turn to stare in stark amazement. “You!” Sam wobbled atop the rise. Quinn caught him as he staggered. Now Caine snapped back to the present, seeing his brother, seeing the killing light. “No,” Caine said. “No, Sam: He’s mine.” He raised a hand, and Sam went flying backward along with Quinn. “The fuel rod!” Jack was yelling, over and over. “It’s going to kill us all. Oh, God, we may already be dead!” Drake rushed at Caine. His eyes were wide with fear. Knowing he wouldn’t make it. Knowing he was not fast enough. Caine raised his hand, and the fuel rod seemed to jump off the ground. A javelin. A spear. He held it poised. Pointed straight at Drake. Caine reached with his other hand, extending the telekinetic power to hold Drake immobilized. Drake held up his human hand, a placating gesture. “Caine…you don’t want to…not over some girl. She was a witch, she was…” Drake, unable to run, a human target. The fuel rod aimed at him like a Spartan’s spear. Caine threw the fuel rod. Tons of steel and lead and uranium. Straight at Drake.

And thank goodness that's the way things are, because the day we lose the spark that makes us want to know things, and young people are content with the nonsense dressed in tinsel sold to them by the current popes of bullshittery--be it a miniature electrical appliance or battery-run chamber pot--and become incapable of understanding anything that lies beyond their backsides, we'll return to the age of the slug.

He always planted at a new moon and picked when the moon was full. He had a lunar chart in his greenhouse, each day marked in a dozen different inks; brown for potatoes, yellow for parsnips, orange for carrots. Watering too was done to an astrological schedule, as was the pruning and positioning of trees. And the garden thrived on this eccentric treatment, growing strong, luxuriant rows of cabbages and turnips, carrots which were sweet and succulent and mysteriously free of slugs, trees whose branches fairly touched the ground under the weight of apples, pears, plums, cherries. Brightly colored Oriental-looking signs taped to tree branches supposedly kept the birds from eating the fruit. Astrological symbols- painstakingly constructed from pieces of broken pottery and colored glass set into the gravel path- lined the garden beds.

Keep an eye on Pinkerton. Don’t shoot any civilians. Or any women you happen to see. Women who might already be there, for example. Women who might also be civilians. And friends of mine. I guess what I’m saying, Ricky, is this: If things get bad, you just shoot Pinkerton. OK?” “Yes, sir.” “We’ll just carve out the slugs, chuck him in the lake, and shrug in boyish wonder when we’re questioned later.