Tar Bar Quotes

When Seymour and I were five and three, Les and Bessie played on the same bill for a couple of weeks with Joe Jackson -- the redoubtable Joe Jackson of the nickel-plated trick bicycle that shone like something better than platinum to the very last row of the theater. A good many years later, not long after the outbreak of the Second World War, when Seymour and I had just recently moved into a small New York apartment of our own, our father -- Les, as he'll be called hereafter -- dropped in on us one evening on his way home from a pinochle game. He quite apparently had held very bad cards all afternoon. He came in, at any rate, rigidly predisposed to keep his overcoat on. He sat. He scowled at the furnishings. He turned my hand over to check for cigarette-tar stains on my fingers, then asked Seymour how many cigarettes he smoked a day. He thought he found a fly in his highball. At length, when the conversation -- in my view, at least -- was going straight to hell, he got up abruptly and went over to look at a photograph of himself and Bessie that had been newly tacked up on the wall. He glowered at it for a full minute, or more, then turned around, with a brusqueness no one in the family would have found unusual, and asked Seymour if he remembered the time Joe Jackson had given him, Seymour, a ride on the handle bars of his bicycle, all over the stage, around and around. Seymour, sitting in an old corduroy armchair across the room, a cigarette going, wearing a blue shirt, gray slacks, moccasins with the counters broken down, a shaving cut on the side of his face that I could see, replied gravely and at once, and in the special way he always answered questions from Les -- as if they were the questions, above all others, he preferred to be asked in his life. He said he wasn't sure he had ever got off Joe Jackson's beautiful bicycle.

It was like hundreds of roads he'd driven over - no different - a stretch of tar, lusterless, scaley, humping toward the center. On both sides were telephone poles, tilted this way and that, up a little, down... Billboards - down farther an increasing clutter of them. Some road signs. A tottering barn in a waste field, the Mail Pouch ad half weathered away. Other fields. A large wood - almost leafless now - the bare branches netting darkly against the sky. Then down, where the road curved away, a big white farmhouse, trees on the lawn, neat fences - and above it all, way up, a television aerial, struck by the sun, shooting out bars of glare like neon. ("Thompson")

One need not smoke to inhale. The air in bars holds its load of tars in stale suspension. Also jails. Jails are a prison for the person who abhors smoke. But happily gorgeous thought also hangs around like that: you can walk through a mist of Brodsky and contact- exist.

A July evening, after a tar-melter of a day, and Broad Street was quiet and muffled with summer, the entire town was dozy with summer, and even as the summer peaked so it began to fade. Dogs didn’t know what had hit them. They walked around with their tongues hanging out and their eyes rolling and they lapped forlornly at the drains. The old were anxious, too: they twitched the curtains to look up the hills, and flapped themselves with copies of the RTE Guide to make a parlour breeze. Later, after dark, the bars would be giddy with lager drinkers, but it was early yet, and Broad Street was bare and peaceful in the blue evening.

Cages of women. Women and girls of all ages. Lining downtown streets behind The Great Barrier Walls. Passersby prodding at them with canes, sticks, and whatever they could find. Spitting on them through the bars, as law and culture required. “Cages of women who had disobeyed their husbands, or sons, their preachers, or some other males in their lives. One or two of them had been foolish and self-destructive enough to have reported a rapist. “A couple of them had befriended someone higher or lower than their stations, or maybe entertained a foreigner from outside the community, or allowed someone of a lesser race into their homes. A few may have done absolutely nothing wrong but for being reported by a neighbor with a grudge. “For the most part they had disobeyed or disrespected males. “Watching from behind tinted and bullet-proof windows at the rear of his immaculate stretch limo, the Lord High Chancellor of PolitiChurch, grinned the sadistic grin of unholy conquest. A dark satisfaction only a deeply tarred soul could enjoy.” … … “Caged women and young girls at major street corners in even the worst weather. Every one of them his to do with, or dispose of, as he would. “In this world – in His world – He was God.” - From “The Soul Hides in Shadows” “It is the year 2037. What is now referred to as ‘The Great Electoral Madness of ’16’ had freed the darkest ignorance, isolationism, misogyny, and racial hatreds in the weakest among us, setting loose the cultural, economic, and moral destruction of America. In the once powerful United States, paranoia, distrust, and hatred now rage at epidemic levels.

W Sta­nach nie­za­leż­nie od po­li­tycz­ne­go roz­da­nia rzą­dzi więc kilka po­tęż­nych or­ga­ni­za­cji lob­by­stycz­nych. Naj­waż­niej­sza z nich to Wall Stre­et, a więc banki i in­sty­tu­cje fi­nan­so­we. Drugą jest sek­tor mi­li­tar­ny oraz bez­pie­czeń­stwa. Wy­jąt­ko­wo groź­ny dla resz­ty świa­ta, co po­ka­za­ły wy­pad­ki sprzed de­ka­dy. Trze­ci blok to po­tęż­ne lobby izra­el­skie. Potem jesz­cze lobby gór­ni­czo-naf­to­we. Szcze­gól­nie wpły­wo­we od cza­sów Geo­r­ge’a W. Busha, który po­sta­wił wieu naf­cia­rzy na czele po­wią­za­nych z rzą­dem ogra­ni­za­cji zaj­mu­ją­cych się śro­do­wi­skiem. Na tym przy­kła­dzie do­brze widać, jak dzia­ła ta „neo­li­be­ral­na de­re­gu­la­cja”. To zna­czy naf­cia­rze w imie­niu rządu re­gu­lu­ją swój wła­sny sek­tor. I niech pan zgad­nie, w któ­rym kie­run­ku to re­gu­lu­ją! Oczy­wi­ście robią to w taki spo­sób, żeby więk­sza część kosz­tów ich dzia­łal­no­ści zo­sta­ła prze­rzu­co­na na in­nych. W tym przy­pad­ku na śro­do­wi­sko. W ten spo­sób ich pro­duk­ty mogą być śmiesz­nie tanie. A sek­tor ban­ko­wy? Do­kład­nie ta sama hi­sto­ria. Po­zwo­lo­no ban­kom w imię wol­no­ści ro­snąć do roz­mia­rów, gdy stały się zbyt duże, by upaść. I teraz rząd musi je ra­to­wać za każ­dym razem, gdy wpad­ną w kło­po­ty. I to nie tylko po­przez ba­ilo­uty. O wiele czę­ściej od­by­wa się to w spo­sób dużo bar­dziej za­ka­mu­flo­wa­ny. Przez dłuż­szy czas Fed mu­siał wpusz­czać w go­spo­dar­kę cięż­kie mi­liar­dy do­dat­ko­wych do­la­rów. W efek­cie na Wall Stre­et pa­nu­je nie­spo­ty­ka­na hossa. A re­al­na go­spo­dar­ka jak tkwi­ła, tak tkwi w kło­po­tach. Na rynek we­wnętrz­ny to się w ogóle nie prze­kła­da. To nie jest żadna de­re­gu­la­cja. To jest sa­mo­re­gu­la­cja.

The cafe-bar was small, and lit by glow-globes so tar-stained they shone orange. Kys bought a thimble of sweet black caffeine and sat where I had instructed her. There were nine other customers, all middle-aged, sallow men in black clothing. They chatted in low, tired voices. Each one had ordered a large mug of foamed milk-caff. They seemed sinister. For a moment, I feared I’d directed Kys into a den frequented by some form of secret police. It was not so. Three doors down from the cafe-bar was the Elandra crematorium. The custom on Eustis Majoris was for sombre, evening funerals. The men were all paid mourners and hearse drivers, taking a respite during the long service before returning to perform their duties on the way to the wake. They sipped cheap amasec and grain liquor covertly from cuff-flasks, and smoked short, fat obscura sticks with hardpaper filters. When they departed, the cooling milk-caffs were left untouched on their benches. The bar owner cleared them without a shrug. The mourners were regulars, the untouched caffeines their way of paying for a seat out of the evening chill.

Rhys picked up a bar of that pine tar-smelling soap and handed it to me, then passed a washrag. 'Someone, it seems, got my wings dirty.

This is only a hotel because they charge you $40 to stay. There’s no furniture and no soap. The water comes in a prostated, rusty dribble. The bath has been used to interrogate sheep. The towel is a bar mat. There’s a blanket, a chipped tin teapot and a carpet that looks like tar applied with a comb.