Torture Funny Quotes

I want to make a memorial for our turkey. Never has a bird been so tortured to provide such a lousy dinner.

She already had a headache-she didn't want to add 'get tortured' to today's to-do list.

I just don't believe in helping people who are going to torture me. Though I don't see any bamboo slivers. How can you possibly torture someone without bamboo slivers?

You know, If you weren't tiny, cute and remarkably innocent looking I'd be running away right now. This feels like the set-up to some torture porn.

The only thing known to go faster than ordinary light is monarchy, according to the philosopher Ly Tin Wheedle. He reasoned like this: you can't have more than one king, and tradition demands that there is no gap between kings, so when a king dies the succession must therefore pass to the heir instantaneously. Presumably, he said, there must be some elementary particles -- kingons, or possibly queons -- that do this job, but of course succession sometimes fails if, in mid-flight, they strike an anti-particle, or republicon. His ambitious plans to use his discovery to send messages, involving the careful torturing of a small king in order to modulate the signal, were never fully expanded because, at that point, the bar closed.

On the surface, I was calm: in secret, without really admitting it, I was waiting for something. Her return? How could I have been waiting for that? We all know that we are material creatures, subject to the laws of physiology and physics, and not even the power of all our feelings combined can defeat those laws. All we can do is detest them. The age-old faith of lovers and poets in the power of love, stronger than death, that finis vitae sed non amoris, is a lie, useless and not even funny. So must one be resigned to being a clock that measures the passage of time, now out of order, now repaired, and whose mechanism generates despair and love as soon as its maker sets it going? Are we to grow used to the idea that every man relives ancient torments, which are all the more profound because they grow comic with repetition? That human existence should repeat itself, well and good, but that it should repeat itself like a hackneyed tune, or a record a drunkard keeps playing as he feeds coins into the jukebox... Must I go on living here then, among the objects we both had touched, in the air she had breathed? In the name of what? In the hope of her return? I hoped for nothing. And yet I lived in expectation. Since she had gone, that was all that remained. I did not know what achievements, what mockery, even what tortures still awaited me. I knew nothing, and I persisted in the faith that the time of cruel miracles was not past.

You’re a lot of things, Nell Hawthorne. You’re complex. You’re cute. You’re lovely. You’re funny. You’re strong. You’re beautiful.” She seems to be struggling with words and emotions. I keep going. “You’re tortured. You’re hurting. You’re amazing. You’re talented. You’re sexy as fuck.

I’m not going anywhere until you hear me out.” Oh, please no. Anything except having to listen to her lecture. I push the button that calls the nurse. “Can we help you, Alex?” a voice bellows through the speaker. “I’m bein’ tortured.

You take I-55 south, and you'll run into I-20. Or you could take..." I was about to be overloaded with information. "Oh that sounds just perfect. Let me do just that, or I'll lose track." Sure, glad I could help." Oh, you surely did." We beamed at each other, just two nice women. I had to fight an impulse to say "I have a tortured vampire in my trunk," out of sheer giddiness.

But other than the cruel fangs and the constant threat of death and torture, there wasn't much to fear in Skree.

There was still plenty of water in the basement, and I felt it soaking me from the knees on down. If someone wanted to torture me until I told them a critical piece of information, all they would have to do is get my socks wet. It feels terrible.

It is usually unbearably painful to read a book by an author who knows way less than you do, unless the book is a novel.

Everyone gets tortured these days. Skulduggery by Serpine, who then turned around and did that red right hand thing at you. Then Skulduggery was tortured again by the Faceless Ones. I figured it was my turn, you know? You're not part of the team if you haven't been tortured- that's what I always say. Well, I'll be saying that from now on anyway.

I grunted, hauling the rope hand over hand. A plaintive squeak came from the pulley system with each draw, as if I had strapped some unfortunate mouse to a torture device and was twisting with glee.

Loneliness tortures many if not most of the elderly more intensely and more frequently than it torments many if not most of us who will never be or have not yet been pushed or pulled into old age.

Responding to a moderator at the Sydney Writers Festival in 2008 (video), about the Spanish words in his book: When all of us are communicating and talking when we’re out in the world, we’ll be lucky if we can understand 20 percent of what people say to us. A whole range of clues, of words, of languages escape us. I mean we’re not perfect, we’re not gods. But on top of that people mis-speak, sometimes you mis-hear, sometimes you don’t have attention, sometimes people use words you don’t know. Sometimes people use languages you don’t know. On a daily basis, human beings are very comfortable with a large component of communication, which is incomprehensibility, incomprehension. We tend to be comfortable with it. But for an immigrant, it becomes very different. What most of us consider normative comprehension an immigrant fears that they’re not getting it because of their lack of mastery in the language. And what’s a normal component in communication, incomprehension, in some ways for an immigrant becomes a source of deep anxiety because you’re not sure if it’s just incomprehension or your own failures. My sense of writing a book where there is an enormous amount of language that perhaps everyone doesn’t have access to was less to communicate the experience of the immigrant than to communicate the experience that for an immigrant causes much discomfort but that is normative for people. which is that we tend to not understand, not grasp a large part of the language around us. What’s funny is, will Ramona accept incomprehension in our everyday lives and will greet that in a book with enormous fury. In other words what we’re comfortable with out in the outside world, we do not want to encounter in our books. So I’m constantly, people have come to me and asked me… is this, are you trying to lock out your non-Dominican reader, you know? And I’m like, no? I assume any gaps in a story and words people don’t understand, whether it’s the nerdish stuff, whether it’s the Elvish, whether it’s the character going on about Dungeons and Dragons, whether it’s the Dominican Spanish, whether it’s the sort of high level graduate language, I assume if people don’t get it that this is not an attempt for the writer to be aggressive. This is an attempt for the writer to encourage the reader to build community, to go out and ask somebody else. For me, words that you can’t understand in a book aren’t there to torture or remind people that they don’t know. I always felt they were to remind people that part of the experience of reading has always been collective. You learn to read with someone else. Yeah you may currently practice it in a solitary fashion, but reading is a collective enterprise. And what the unintelligible in a book does is to remind you how our whole, lives we’ve always needed someone else to help us with reading.

Those unearthly eyes were so close, she could see the reflection of her own furious expression in their depths. “I’d rather watch you take a lover than die at my hands.” She knew how much those words must’ve tortured him. Even now, the air was staining bloodred with anger. “And would you let that man live?” she whispered. No response. That gave her hope even when hope seemed impossible. “Then we fight, Judd.” She dared to place her hand gently on his chest. He flinched but didn’t move away. “We fight until every avenue is closed and then we dig under the roadblocks. Because I am not walking away from us.” Strong words, but she was shaking. He could destroy her with a few careless comments. “You’re the strongest, most determined woman I know.” He played his fingers along the strands of her hair. “You’d make mincemeat out of a lesser man. It’s a good thing you belong to me.” Relief almost collapsed her knees. “Not funny.” “I’m serious.” Something very male moved over his face. “If you say yes now, I won’t let you go if you decide I’m not what you want later on down the road. You say yes, you say yes forever. Be sure.

Christians believe: If you love God you go to heaven. If you don't go to heaven, you go to hell. So, if you don't love God, you go to hell. God created everything, including heaven and hell. So he created a torture chamber, in case you don't love him back. Crazy.

Funny, isn’t it? No matter what language they speak, everyone sounds the same when you pull out their fingernails.” – Dread Emperor Foul III, “the Linguist

Oh, torture. Is this purgatory, and if it is, why is it so much like the first grade?

I say, `Woe to them that have a nose, a real nose, and come to look round the torture-chamber! Aha, aha, aha!

Neil Mars?! I could blame him for having killer looks but he could not be faulted for this. He couldn’t have chosen that name for himself. No wonder he tortures his Mom by calling her by her name.

I’ve tried many torturous techniques to make my outsides fit the ridiculous standards society has set but it never ends well because my body lives in reality and it’s a reality that has too much cheese in it.

You have no idea how many times in my life I've wanted to publicly bitch-slap my brother. Thank you for the amusement." Athena "I thought you were going to choke me for it." Bethany "Not for this. But don't think for even one heartbeat that we're friends." Athena "I know. But I am a goddess of justice, and while I have no problem tearing open someone who deserves it, I cannot stand to see anyone, even a Greek, wrongfully tortured." Bethany "Now can I have my body back? No offense, but I don't wear old man well." Athena

Why was he doing this? So that life could continue in the metro? Right. So that they could grow mushrooms and pigs at VDNKh in the future, and so that his stepfather and Zhenkina’s family lived there in peace, so that people unknown to him could settle at Alekseevskaya and at Rizhskaya, and so that the uneasy bustle of trade at Byelorusskaya didn’t die away. So that the Brahmins could stroll about Polis in their robes and rustle the pages of books, grasping the ancient knowledge and passing it on to subsequent generations. So that the fascists could build their Reich, capturing racial enemies and torturing them to death, and so that the Worm people could spirit away strangers’ children and eat adults, and so that the woman at Mayakovskaya could bargain with her young son in the future, earning herself and him some bread. So that the rat races at Paveletskaya didn’t end, and the fighters of the revolutionary brigade could continue their assaults on fascists and their funny dialectical arguments. And so that thousands of people throughout the whole metro could breathe, eat, love one another, give life to their children, defecate and sleep, dream, fight, kill, be ravished and betrayed, philosophize and hate, and so that each could believe in his own paradise and his own hell . . . So that life in the metro, senseless and useless, exalted and filled with light, dirty and seething, endlessly diverse, so miraculous and fine could continue.

Once Errol righted himself into some semblance of horsemanship, they set off at an easy canter. That is, the other horses set off at a canter, while Errol's horse settled into a teeth-shattering trot. After a hundred paces he could feel Horace's backbone through the saddle. The other riders pulled ahead without a backward glance, leaving him to his four-footed torture.

I'll never amount to anything—well anything my parents want, so instead I’ll end up puking and drinking till I’m blind drunk, It’s funny my mother says I hurt myself to spite her but she doesn’t know I hurt myself because I am, I am, I am a writer.

The thing Tedros liked about girls is that they always started the conversation. Most of the time, his job was just to listen, ask questions, and try to understand what in God’s name was going on in their complicated little heads. He rarely had any idea what girls were talking about or why they made everything so torturous in their logic, so playing the role of the strong, silent type usually gave him time to catch up.

Kestus idly added theoretical torture to the theoretical murder, because done right, it might be funny.

It was if the devil himself had devised the perfect earthly torture for Lady Alicia Lawrence. “Now how will I occupy myself when I get to hell?

I said strip, pet, not torture me to death.

Finn Is God She takes a different strategy to torture us. Julie Seagle Really? I have more in common with her than my own mother. Finn Is God That’s a horrible thing to say about yourself. Appearances are not everything. Case in point: One summer when I was at day camp, I made her an art project. She spent weeks saying how weird it was that I’d made her a woodcarving that said “WOW.” Julie Seagle ??? Julie Seagle Oh, wait a minute…! Finn Is God Yeah. She had it upside down. It was supposed to read “MOM.” Julie Seagle I’m sorry, but that IS funny! Finn Is God That’s my mother for you. I think she still has it. And is probably still under the wrong impression. Julie Seagle Oh, my. Sort of sweet in a tragic way. Finn

I'm transferring Ian down to New Orleans to assist with this,” Arch said as he looked at both men. “I would send Shayne, but Anna won't let him go anywhere without her. They're still in the honeymoon phase.” He made a quote motion with his fingers. Peter and Vincent exchanged horrified looks, before Peter responded. “Please, don't put us through that torture.

Let me tell you about spirit.” The teacher comes alive, making eye contact with each of us as he speaks. “No one can command you to have spirit—not principals, governors, presidents, or even kings. There’s no spirit switch in your brain that can be flipped on or off. Spirit isn’t a week you can put on your calendar. It doesn’t come from posters, or streamers, or rallies, or funny hat days. And it definitely doesn’t come from making an ungodly racket with a cheap plastic instrument of torture that was invented purely for disturbing the peace!

New Rule: America must stop bragging it's the greatest country on earth, and start acting like it. I know this is uncomfortable for the "faith over facts" crowd, but the greatness of a country can, to a large degree, be measured. Here are some numbers. Infant mortality rate: America ranks forty-eighth in the world. Overall health: seventy-second. Freedom of the press: forty-fourth. Literacy: fifty-fifth. Do you realize there are twelve-year old kids in this country who can't spell the name of the teacher they're having sex with? America has done many great things. Making the New World democratic. The Marshall Plan. Curing polio. Beating Hitler. The deep-fried Twinkie. But what have we done for us lately? We're not the freest country. That would be Holland, where you can smoke hash in church and Janet Jackson's nipple is on their flag. And sadly, we're no longer a country that can get things done. Not big things. Like building a tunnel under Boston, or running a war with competence. We had six years to fix the voting machines; couldn't get that done. The FBI is just now getting e-mail. Prop 87 out here in California is about lessening our dependence on oil by using alternative fuels, and Bill Clinton comes on at the end of the ad and says, "If Brazil can do it, America can, too!" Since when did America have to buck itself up by saying we could catch up to Brazil? We invented the airplane and the lightbulb, they invented the bikini wax, and now they're ahead? In most of the industrialized world, nearly everyone has health care and hardly anyone doubts evolution--and yes, having to live amid so many superstitious dimwits is also something that affects quality of life. It's why America isn't gonna be the country that gets the inevitable patents in stem cell cures, because Jesus thinks it's too close to cloning. Oh, and did I mention we owe China a trillion dollars? We owe everybody money. America is a debtor nation to Mexico. We're not a bridge to the twenty-first century, we're on a bus to Atlantic City with a roll of quarters. And this is why it bugs me that so many people talk like it's 1955 and we're still number one in everything. We're not, and I take no glee in saying that, because I love my country, and I wish we were, but when you're number fifty-five in this category, and ninety-two in that one, you look a little silly waving the big foam "number one" finger. As long as we believe being "the greatest country in the world" is a birthright, we'll keep coasting on the achievements of earlier generations, and we'll keep losing the moral high ground. Because we may not be the biggest, or the healthiest, or the best educated, but we always did have one thing no other place did: We knew soccer was bullshit. And also we had the Bill of Rights. A great nation doesn't torture people or make them disappear without a trial. Bush keeps saying the terrorist "hate us for our freedom,"" and he's working damn hard to see that pretty soon that won't be a problem.

When sleep came, I would dream bad dreams. Not the baby and the big man with a cigarette-lighter dream. Another dream. The castle dream. A little girl of about six who looks -like me, but isn’t me, is happy as she steps out of the car with her daddy. They enter the castle and go down the steps to the dungeon where people move like shadows in the glow of burning candles. There are carpets and funny pictures on the walls. Some of the people wear hoods and robes. Sometimes they chant in droning voices that make the little girl afraid. There are other children, some of them without any clothes on. There is an altar like the altar in nearby St Mildred’s Church. The children take turns lying on that altar so the people, mostly men, but a few women, can kiss and lick their private parts. The daddy holds the hand of the little girl tightly. She looks up at him and he smiles. The little girl likes going out with her daddy. I did want to tell Dr Purvis these dreams but I didn’t want her to think I was crazy, and so kept them to myself. The psychiatrist was wiser than I appreciated at the time; sixteen-year-olds imagine they are cleverer than they really are. Dr Purvis knew I had suffered psychological damage as a child, that’s why she kept making a fresh appointment week after week. But I was unable to give her the tools and clues to find out exactly what had happened.

He was flying over India now, still making notes. He remembered hearing an Indian politician on TV talking about the British prime minister and being unable to pronounce her name properly. “Mrs. Torture,” he kept saying. “Mrs. Margaret Torture.” This was unaccountably funny.

Forget bringing the troops home from Iraq. We need to get the troops home from World War II. Can anybody tell me why, in 2009, we still have more than sixty thousand troops in Germany and thirty thousand in Japan? At some point, these people are going to have to learn to rape themselves. Our soldiers have been in Germany so long they now wear shorts with black socks. You know that crazy soldier hiding in the cave on Iwo Jima who doesn’t know the war is over? That’s us. Bush and Cheney used to love to keep Americans all sphinctered-up on the notion that terrorists might follow us home. But actually, we’re the people who go to your home and then never leave. Here’s the facts: The Republic of America has more than five hundred thousand military personnel deployed on more than seven hundred bases, with troops in one hundred fifty countries—we’re like McDonald’s with tanks—including thirty-seven European countries—because you never know when Portugal might invade Euro Disney. And this doesn’t even count our secret torture prisons, which are all over the place, but you never really see them until someone brings you there—kinda like IHOP. Of course, Americans would never stand for this in reverse—we can barely stand letting Mexicans in to do the landscaping. Can you imagine if there were twenty thousand armed Guatemalans on a base in San Ber-nardino right now? Lou Dobbs would become a suicide bomber. And why? How did this country get stuck with an empire? I’m not saying we’re Rome. Rome had good infrastructure. But we are an empire, and the reason is because once America lands in a country, there is no exit strategy. We’re like cellulite, herpes, and Irish relatives: We are not going anywhere. We love you long time!

Stop calling me that!' I squirmed. 'And you should stop doing that,' he said, his voice rougher, deeper. 'Then again. Please continue. It's the perfect kind of torture.' ... 'You're sick.' 'And twisted. Perverse, and dark.' The rough stubble of his chin dragged over my cheek, and my spine arched in response. He seemed to get even close as his fingers spread over mine. 'I'm a lot of things-' 'Murderer?

A writer’s brain is full of little gifts, like a piñata at a birthday party. It’s also full of demons, like a piñata at a birthday party in a mental hospital. The truth is, it’s demons that keep a tortured writer’s spirit alive, not Tootsie Rolls. Sure they’ll give you a tiny burst of energy, but they won’t do squat for your writing. So treat your demons with the respect they deserve, and with enough prescriptions to keep you wearing pants.

The proper attitude toward human activity and climate is expressed in the 1957 novel Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand. Consider the following passage, where industrialist-philosopher Francisco d’Anconia remarks to steel magnate Hank Rearden how dangerous the climate is, absent massive industrial development. The conversation takes place indoors at an elegant party during a severe storm (in the era before all severe storms were blamed on fossil fuels). There was only a faint tinge of red left on the edge of the earth, just enough to outline the scraps of clouds ripped by the tortured battle of the storm in the sky. Dim shapes kept sweeping through space and vanishing, shapes which were branches, but looked as if they were the fury of the wind made visible. “It’s a terrible night for any animal caught unprotected on that plain,” said Francisco d’Anconia. “This is when one should appreciate the meaning of being a man.” Rearden did not answer for a moment; then he said, as if in answer to himself, a tone of wonder in his voice, “Funny . . .” “What?” “You told me what I was thinking just a while ago . . .” “You were?” “. . . only I didn’t have the words for it.” “Shall I tell you the rest of the words?” “Go ahead.” “You stood here and watched the storm with the greatest pride one can ever feel—because you are able to have summer flowers and half-naked women in your house on a night like this, in demonstration of your victory over that storm. And if it weren’t for you, most of those who are here would be left helpless at the mercy of that wind in the middle of some such plain.

BILL MURRAY, Cast Member: Gilda got married and went away. None of us saw her anymore. There was one good thing: Laraine had a party one night, a great party at her house. And I ended up being the disk jockey. She just had forty-fives, and not that many, so you really had to work the music end of it. There was a collection of like the funniest people in the world at this party. Somehow Sam Kinison sticks in my brain. The whole Monty Python group was there, most of us from the show, a lot of other funny people, and Gilda. Gilda showed up and she’d already had cancer and gone into remission and then had it again, I guess. Anyway she was slim. We hadn’t seen her in a long time. And she started doing, “I’ve got to go,” and she was just going to leave, and I was like, “Going to leave?” It felt like she was going to really leave forever. So we started carrying her around, in a way that we could only do with her. We carried her up and down the stairs, around the house, repeatedly, for a long time, until I was exhausted. Then Danny did it for a while. Then I did it again. We just kept carrying her; we did it in teams. We kept carrying her around, but like upside down, every which way—over your shoulder and under your arm, carrying her like luggage. And that went on for more than an hour—maybe an hour and a half—just carrying her around and saying, “She’s leaving! This could be it! Now come on, this could be the last time we see her. Gilda’s leaving, and remember that she was very sick—hello?” We worked all aspects of it, but it started with just, “She’s leaving, I don’t know if you’ve said good-bye to her.” And we said good-bye to the same people ten, twenty times, you know. And because these people were really funny, every person we’d drag her up to would just do like five minutes on her, with Gilda upside down in this sort of tortured position, which she absolutely loved. She was laughing so hard we could have lost her right then and there. It was just one of the best parties I’ve ever been to in my life. I’ll always remember it. It was the last time I saw her.

I have an antipathy to dogs, not because they are faithful, but because they are shameless. Because they carry on their love affairs on the street.” Again that crimson flush overspread her features. “Cats are more cultured about such things—if I may use that much misused word. There are insects that mate only in the darkest nights, in the most forsaken corners, so that no forester has ever succeeded in observing them. I've always held that there will come a time when we will speak of the barbarous practices of this century, or the last ten centuries, as if they were a fairy-tale. Just think how tremendously funny it must strike any sensitive person when two people, having conceived a certain desire to go to bed with one another, set a special date for the event. They inform certain public institutions, the State, the Church. They tell their friends and relations, their own parents, their own brothers and sisters. On the day which is to end in that night, they gather everybody they know about them, let themselves be observed by persons who stuff themselves and drink until they are sick, listen to suggestive songs and suggestive speeches—and yet do not get sick themselves. I've always had a feeling that marriage as it is practiced today would be fit punishment for a hardened criminal. It is such a cruel, such an exquisite torture. Metta, my child, oblige me and if you ever decide to marry, do it when you desire and not on some appointed day. Do it in utter secrecy so that no living soul can suspect the possibility of such a thing....

As he helped Sejanus unpack and make his bed, Coriolanus got caught up on the Capitol news. His suspicions about the Hunger Games were right. “By the next morning, there was no mention of it,” said Sejanus. “When I went into the Academy for my review, I heard some of the faculty talking about what a mistake it’d been to involve the students, so I think that was a one-off. But I wouldn’t be surprised if we see Lucky Flickerman back again next year, or the post office open for gifts and betting.” “Our legacy,” said Coriolanus. “So it seems,” said Sejanus. “Satyria told Professor Sickle that Dr. Gaul is determined to keep it going somehow. A part of her eternal war, I guess. Instead of battles, we have the Hunger Games.” “Yes, to punish the districts and remind us what beasts we are,” said Coriolanus, focused on lining up Sejanus’s folded socks in the locker. “What?” asked Sejanus, giving him a funny look. “I don’t know,” said Coriolanus. “It’s like . . . you know how she’s always torturing that rabbit or melting the flesh off something?” “Like she enjoys it?” asked Sejanus. “Exactly. I think that’s how she thinks we all are. Natural-born killers. Inherently violent,” Coriolanus said. “The Hunger Games are a reminder of what monsters we are and how we need the Capitol to keep us from chaos.” “So, not only is the world a brutal place, but people enjoy its brutality? Like the essay on everything we loved about the war,” said Sejanus. “As if it had been some big show.” He shook his head. “So much for not thinking.” “Forget it,” said Coriolanus. “Let’s just be happy that she’s out of our lives.” A downcast Beanpole appeared, reeking of urinals and bleach. Coriolanus introduced him to Sejanus, who, upon learning of his predicament, cheered him up by promising to help him with the drills. “It took me awhile to get it, too, back at school. But if I can master it, so can you.

She is pissed off all the time,” he mumbled and I remained silent, letting him ramble. “She wants chocolate ice cream, I go in search of chocolate, but the time I get back she’s pissed because she wants strawberry instead. I can’t win.” He looked me straight in the eyes and I swear his expression was one of desperation. “It wasn’t like this before. With Liam she was so sweet. But I swear the damn devil has possessed my wife and she might kill me in my sleep one night.” It was then I laughed. “What the hell is so funny?” he asked. “I sleep with one eye open and one leg hanging off the bed touching the floor at my side. This way if I have to move fast I feel I’m one step closer.” He didn’t smile. There was absolutely no humor in his words. “Weren’t you the one that said you wanted five kids?” I asked. “I changed my mind. After this one, we’re done. I want Trinity back.” Again, complete seriousness. Poor guy looked lost. And it was the best damn thing to witness. Within four months of having Liam, Trinity was pregnant again. And this time she was cranky as hell. Everyone noticed it, but she directed all that aggravation toward the man she said was to blame. And the rest of us loved to witness his hell. “Go home, Chase,” I told him and he looked as if he wanted to argue. “Stop at the store and pick up every flavor of ice cream they got,” I told him. “Tell her she’s beautiful and rub her feet.” “I do that already,” he whined. “I tell her she’s beautiful, and no other woman has ever looked as amazing as her. I tell her I love her and that she is my world, but she is like the exorcist.” “Well it’s your job to take it. Let her growl and complain and just take it,” I told him. “Because at the end of the day you just need to remember one thing.” He looked at me like I was about to give him the best piece of advice. I almost felt bad about the fact that I had nothing reassuring to say. “What?” he asked and I cracked a smile, almost talking myself out of taking the chance at being an asshole. Then I thought about the fact that had the roles been reversed he would have jumped at the chance. “You are to blame for the state she is in.” He narrowed his eyes at me. “And the rest of us guys are loving that it’s you and not us being tortured.” “You’re an asshole,” he mumbled as he turned around and walked off toward his truck. I laughed the entire drive home.

I glanced over and saw Wyatt glaring at me. Journey’s “Lovin’ Touchin’, Squeezin’” was playing on the radio. “What?” I asked. “You secretly hate me, don’t you.” He gestured toward the radio. “You can’t stand the thought of me taking a much needed nap and leaving you to drive without conversation. You’re torturing me with this sappy stuff.” “It’s Journey. I love this song.” Wyatt mumbled something under his breath, picked up the CD case, and started looking through it. He paused with a choked noise, his eyes growing huge. “You’re joking, Sam. Justin Bieber? What are you, a twelve-year old girl?” There’s gonna be one less lonely girl, I sang in my head. That was a great song. How could he not like that song? Still, I squirmed a bit in embarrassment. “A twelve-year old girl gave me that CD,” I lied. “For my birthday.” Wyatt snorted. “It’s a good thing you’re a terrible liar. Otherwise, I’d be horrified at the thought that a demon has been hanging out with a bunch of giggling pre-teens.” He continued to thumb through the CDs. “Air Supply Greatest Hits? No, no, I’m wrong here. It’s an Air Supply cover band in Spanish.” He waved the offending CD in my face. “Sam, what on earth are you thinking? How did you even get this thing?” “Some tenant left it behind,” I told him. “We evicted him, and there were all these CDs. Most were in Spanish, but I’ve got a Barry Manilow in there, too. That one’s in English.” Wyatt looked at me a moment, and with the fastest movement I’ve ever seen, rolled down the window and tossed the case of CDs out onto the highway. It barely hit the road before a semi plowed over it. I was pissed. “You asshole. I liked those CDs. I don’t come over to your house and trash your video games, or drive over your controllers. If you think that will make me listen to that Dubstep crap for the next two hours, then you better fucking think again.” “I’m sorry Sam, but it’s past time for a musical intervention here. You can’t keep listening to this stuff. It wasn’t even remotely good when it was popular, and it certainly hasn’t gained anything over time. You need to pull yourself together and try to expand your musical interests a bit. You’re on a downward spiral, and if you keep this up, you’ll find yourself friendless, living in a box in a back alley, stinking of your own excrement, and covered in track marks.” I looked at him in surprise. I had no idea Air Supply led to lack of bowel control and hard core drug usage. I wondered if it was something subliminal, a kind of compulsion programmed into the lyrics. Was Russell Hitchcock a sorcerer? He didn’t look that menacing to me, but sorcerers were pretty sneaky. Even so, I was sure Justin Bieber was okay. As soon as we hit a rest stop, I was ordering a replacement from my iPhone.

He was enormously relieved to hear the facts at last. Riva Allen was brought in. She entered the room with an air. She seemed intelligent, assured and quite gay. She had obviously abandoned her act of being an unregistered courtesan. She looked at Marin with a bright smile and said cheerfully, “Well—lover!” And she laughed, an easy, tinkling, relaxed laughter. Marin glanced questioningly at the women who had escorted his captive. He recognized them as skillful interrogators. He asked, “Get anything?” The older woman answered, “We’ve been with her ever since she was turned over to us at a quarter to nine. Everything we ask her, every persuasive method we use, just makes her laugh.” Marin nodded calmly. But there was no doubt of the defeat that was here. His guess the night before had been correct. Chemicals. Most likely, she had had the stuff concealed in a false tooth, which simply required her to bite down once, hard. He knew this “laughing” drug. It ended all fear. Threat of death, use of torture, were equally funny to the individual under its influence. The effect would last about twenty-four hours. By taking such a drug, this woman spy had removed herself as a participant during the decisive hours ahead. Marin said, reluctantly but with finality, “Take her away! Keep her under arrest!” His secretary came in. “Lieutenant David Burnley to see you, sir, by your instructions.” Marin said, “Send him in.

Nothing, not an IRS audit, not even waterboarding, is worse than having country music forced on you.

How funny is it that we are constantly told to follow our dreams but are punished to a torturous degree if our dreams don't come true like the way we want them to. It takes a lot to bloom again after it. But being able to bloom again is what matters. The crux lies in the answer to the question that 'Do we really bloom again?' Perhaps yes, but perhaps never in the same way.

Crooking a finger, she beckoned him. Crawl back in bed and try to keep his mind off sinking his hard cock into her sweetness, or take a really cold fucking shower— while giving himself a hand job to better help him keep his promise to her of not claiming her before she was ready. He chose pure torture. He crawled back into bed with her. Was the “Eep,” that escaped him as the touch of her burrowing against him very manly? No, and neither was his feline very supportive considering it did a flop and stuck its legs in the air, lolled its tongue, and pretended it was cartoon dead. Very fucking funny. But true. It might kill him having her spooned so close, and him promising to not claim her. Yet, how could he refuse her when she said, “Will you sleep with me and keep the nightmares away?” He uttered a mournful second “Eep” as her buttocks fitted against his groin, but he used the torture as a strengthening exercise all the while thinking, my woman, mine, as he held her in his arms.

Just to be clear, the man from the art department wasn’t boasting about publishing Hitler’s tome. He didn’t say, ‘We’ve got a brilliantly eclectic list here at Random House, Bridget, so you’re in good company. We’ve got Harper Lee, Katie Price, Hitler, you. So I thought, for the front cover, we could have you sitting on planet Venus, looking over at planet Mars with a sort of confused look on your face, like on all those other books by women now. We just need to let the readers know that this book is a funny, light-hearted look at feminism, and how you approach feminism and violations of human rights in your stand-up, Bridget. We need to reassure them it’s not going to be full of photographs of men being horrifically tortured and suffocated with their own cocks while loads of feminists stand around laughing, drinking yards of ale, welding metals and thermoplastics and playing darts with the donated embalmed penes of dead male feminists. Many of our readers won’t want to read a book like that. We are a commercial publishing house.

I shifted my eyes to the edge of the table, where the woman in the witch hat was back for more. She looked as if she was on her way out – which was probably a good thing. “You might not believe me about Ms. Tillie, but you will,” the woman warned. “Dan Millikan spent two weeks being tortured by all the guys in town for the pimple incident. They put Stridex pads on his locker … and left Clearasil on his desk. I hear he runs screaming whenever he sees a Proactive commercial now. Think about that before you take on Ms. Tillie.” The woman flounced off, leaving Brian to scowl and me to laugh. “How can you encourage stuff like that?” Brian asked, incredulous. “I find it funny,” I said. “Come on. You have to admire a woman who has convinced an entire town that arguing with her will cause them great bodily harm.

Mmmhmm, you don't even like your little sister and brother—" "Well… that's true, but I do love them. And someday, when they aren't four-year-old aliens, I may even come to like them. So what do you say? Please… please… please?" "Okay, okay… we'll go to Grampa's workshop tomorrow, and we'll open the box there." Patti clapped her hands. "Sweet! And I promise, Carly, not even if someone ties me up and tortures me by eating all of my fave desserts in front of me, I - will - not – crack." She zipped her lips and threw away the key.

Wait.” A sliver of ice ran down her back. “Where’s Driggs?” The others looked around. “Driggs,” she called out, her voice becoming higher and more panicked. “Driggs!” The whiteness turned into a blur as she waded and dug through the snow, her hands freezing. Zara got him, she knew it. And she’d hold him hostage this time, especially now that she knew what he could do. She’d torture him, turn Lex into her slave, and then Damn him as soon as he had served his purpose as leverage. Lex’s eyes melted into a mess of tears, both from the stinging cold and the unthinkable possibilities running through her mind. Her throat was raw from yelling, her voice becoming raspier and more desperate. “Driggs!” And then she saw a hand. The hand was connected to an arm. And the arm was connected to the rest of him, sitting in the ditch next to the road and silently waving. Relief turned to anger. Very quickly. “Are you kidding me?” she exploded, stumbling toward him. “Why didn’t you answer? Was that supposed to be funny? I thought you were—” “Sorry,” he said, holding up something white and furry. “I landed on a rabbit.” Well, that cinched it. A wet-haired Driggs sitting in a snowdrift and petting a bunny was officially the most adorable thing Lex had ever seen. She grabbed his head and gave him a kiss, then smacked him, causing the bunny to hop off. “Don’t you ever do that again.

I got you a bunch of stuff today at the store. Why don’t you check it out?” she asks. His brow arches. “You got stuff for me?” He grins and whoops and goes to rummage through the bags. He is a teenage boy, and I do have experience with those beasts. The girls, not so much. When Sky’s not looking, I chuck him on the shoulder and warn, “Even if you don’t like it, pretend you do. Don’t hurt her feelings.” “Are you kidding?” he asks. He holds up a T-shirt. “These are great.” He tries his shoes on, and they fit. She bought Vans, so she couldn’t go wrong there. He loves them. “You shouldn’t have, Aunt Sky,” he says. He gets up and goes to her. She’s grinning from ear to ear. He picks her up and spins her around. “Thank you,” he says. She squeals. “I have to get used to that hugging thing you do,” she says. “Why?” he asks. He looks confused. I have a feeling Sky didn’t get much affection as a child. But these kids were steeped in it. “It’s just…not something I’m used to,” she says. Seth’s face falls. “Do you want me to stop?” he asks. “I hugged my mom all the time.” “If you stop, I’ll have to ground you or make you wear a funny hat to school or something. Hell, I don’t know how to torture you, but I’d come up with something.” She laughs, but I can tell she’s uncomfortable. He wraps his arm around her shoulder again and squeezes her. She squeaks a little, and he laughs. “You’re like a little mouse,” he says. “Do you whisper when you’re angry, too?” She punches his shoulder. “You’ll find out if you keep it up.

There's something weird about Wednesday. Wednesday's child is full of woe. Wednesday is sad and anxious about who he is, where he stands in the week. The word is weird. It should be Weirdsdsay. Wednesday would like to be Latin but took his name from Woden, the Norse God. The Old English had to say Wednesdaeg, which is a bit of a mouthful. Funny things happen on Wednesday.

That will be intriguing.' He paused. 'And torturous since you'll be riding with me.' My heart skipped over itself as I looked over at him. 'And why is that intriguing? And torturous?' One side of his lips curved up. The dimple appeared. 'Besides the fact that it will allow me to keep a very close eye on you? Use your imagination, Princess.' My imagination didn't fail me then. 'That's inappropriate,' I told him. 'Is it?' He dipped his chin. 'You're not the Maiden out here. You're Poppy, unveiled and unburduned.

It doesn’t come from posters, or streamers, or rallies, or funny hat days. And it definitely doesn’t come from making an ungodly racket with a cheap plastic instrument of torture that was invented purely for disturbing the peace!

I COME BEFORE DAWN Muhammad says, “I come before dawn to chain you and drag you off.” It’s amazing, and funny, that you have to be pulled away from being tortured, pulled out into this Spring garden, but that’s the way it is. Almost everyone must be bound and dragged here. Only a few come on their own. Children have to be made to go to school at first. Then some of them begin to like it. They run to school. They expand with the learning. Later, they receive money because of something they’ve learned at school, and they get really excited. They stay up all night, as watchful and alive as thieves! Remember the rewards you get for being obedient! There are two types on the path. Those who come against their will, the blindly religious people, and those who obey out of love. The former have ulterior motives. They want the midwife near, because she gives them milk. The others love the beauty of the nurse. The former memorize the prooftexts of conformity, and repeat them. The latter disappear into whatever draws them to God. Both are drawn from the source. Any movings from the mover. Any love from the beloved.

That’s the biggest myth, right there: Kurt Cobain, the tortured artist. People don’t realize that guy was a funny motherfucker.

You killed him," I said. Malice smirked, as if this was funny. As if the brutal death in his guest room was nothing more than an outlet for his destruction. "I did." I was trembling, my entire body shaking from the adrenaline and fear. "You...you tortured him," I whispered. "I did." "You saved me." At my awed tone, Malice softened some. "I did," he echoed once more. Simple words packed with sentimental meaning. He cared. "And I’d do it again. Now come here and fuck me while his corpse watches.

I was wondering how you were going to punish me for not confiding in you. Punishment, actually, is something I’ve been thinking about for a long time. What form of punishment is enough for what I did? Imprisonment? Death? Something else? Something scarier? I could only think of so many horrible tortures before they stopped having meaning. But you, you’ve come up with a punishment I never considered. You’re going to sulk me to death.” “I’m glad you find this amusing.” “I’ve had years to see the funny side.

There is no clearer sign of the absence of originality among modern poets than their disposition to find new themes. Really original poets write poems about the spring. They are always fresh, just as the spring is always fresh. Men wholly without originality write poems about torture, or new religions, of some perversion of obscenity, hoping that the mere sting of the subject may speak for them. But we do not sufficiently realise that what is true of the classic ode is also true of the classic joke. A true poet writes about the spring being beautiful because (after a thousand springs) the spring really is beautiful. In the same way the true humourist writes about a man sitting down on his hat, because the act of sitting down on one’s hat (however often and however admirably performed) really is extremely funny. We must not dismiss a new poet because his poem is called To a Skylark; nor must we dismiss a humourist because his new farce is called My Mother-in-law. He may really have splendid and inspiring things to say upon an eternal problem. The whole question is whether he has.

Right when I was about to close the computer and call it quits on torturing myself for the day, a new message pinged in the thread. Samuel had sent me a JPEG. I stared at it warily, knowing that from him there was a 50/50 chance it was either something horrifying or a dick pic though really, it was one in the same.